Surprises and Bananas Foster Pancakes

Well, it’s official, Valentine’s Day 2013 will go down in the record books as the best Valentine’s Day to date because it’s the day Kevin FINALLY gave in to my relentless pleads to add a puppy to our already crazy busy life and surprised me with this little ball of fur.

Friends, let me introduce you to Ravioli (Ravi) Fredrick Leggio, the newest addition to the Leggio household. Isn’t he precious??

Needless to say, I didn’t get much cooking/blogging done in the last five days because how could I do anything else besides play and snuggle with this little cutie? Lucky for you I made these to-die-for bananas foster pancakes last weekend and have yet to share. Let’s cross our fingers that I can pry myself away from little Ravi next weekend and make it back to the kitchen…This guy could be bad for blogging!

Now let’s talk pancakes. More specifically, bananas foster pancakes.

Um yeah, I went there. A dessert for breakfast always makes sense, right?

You may or may not have noticed, but if I can find a way to fancy up breakfast (or anything), I’ll do it. Life would be boring with the same redundant eggs, bacon, and pancakes every weekend, wouldn’t it? Or am I the only one that prefers to eat something different every day? I guess maybe some people thrive off of repetitiveness, and find comfort in a daily routine of over-easy eggs, bacon, and toast with a cup of coffee or whatever the meal of choice is. Power to those people, but I just can’t do it.

I don’t really think I need to tell you this, as I’m sure it’s been previously implied by the drool-worthy picture, over-the-top word choice and emphatic italics, but what started out as merely one of a million ideas floating around in my head has morphed into pretty much the best sweet breakfast food I’ve ever concocted. No joke. You just can’t go wrong with fluffy banana buttermilk pancakes topped off with more bananas drowned in butter and brown sugar – oh and not to be forgotten, a liberal dousing of brandy.

The first time I had bananas foster was when I was a teenager and my parents made a pit stop on our way to Destin for a couple of nights in New Orleans. We went to a famous New Orlean’s restaurant, of which I’m a little foggy on the name, I think it was Brennan’s, but can’t be sure without confirmation from my Mom. The one thing I can still vividly remember is the incredible bananas foster we all had for dessert.

The waiter dressed in his crisp black and white uniform slowly approached our table with a little cart on wheels and a small portable electric stove. He turned the flame on, melted a little butter and brown sugar in a screaming hot pan, then gracefully poured in dark rum and without breaking a sweat lit the whole pan on fire, swirling until the flame had subsided. What remained was a banana caramel dream that he then poured over a mountain of sweet vanilla ice cream. It was one of those moments that I was just in complete and utter awe. To me this guy at that moment was the coolest person in the whole world, had the coolest job in the whole world, and I wanted to make banana’s foster just like him.

What seemed like a daunting dish to recreate myself, proved to be surprisingly easy and straightforward, which is always a relief. So since I’ve mastered the traditional bananas foster it made perfect sense to me to do what I do, and transform it into the ultimate breakfast dish, and that is how bananas foster pancakes were born.