Our first R&D nut butter batch of 2024 is Bananas Foster Peanut & Cashew Butter, made with fresh-roasted High Oleic Runner peanuts, Organic cashews, bananas, Kill Devil Rum, Organic maple syrup, Organic coconut nectar, cinnamon, vanilla, and Jacobsen sea salt. This nut butter take on the legendary New Orleans dessert offers the cinnamon-toasted, boozy banana flavor you'd expect, just without the tableside flambé. We also made it vegan and without refined sugar, just for you.
A Brief History of Bananas Foster
The origin stories of iconic American dishes are often mysterious, or at the very least, contested. Not so with Bananas Foster, the classic New Orleans dessert comprised of bananas flambéed with rum and served with vanilla ice cream. In 1951, legendary restauranteur Owen Brennan asked his sister Ella to come up with a “fancy new dessert” for a dinner that night at their restaurant, Vieux Carre, honoring local civic leader Richard Foster.
Ella remembered a simple dessert her mother had made by sauteing banana halves with butter and brown sugar. To “jazz it up,” as one does in New Orleans, Vieux Carre’s chef Paul Blange poured rum and banana liqueur on top, setting the mixture on fire at tableside, and tossed in cinnamon to make it sparkle in the flames before serving the concoction over vanilla ice cream. They called it "bananas Foster," and a classic was born.
A NOLA Classic Meets Rum from the Outer Banks
For the ever-important rum in this recipe, we partnered with the Manteo, NC-based craft operation of Outer Banks Distilling, whose flagship Kill Devil Silver Rum offers pitch-perfect notes of toasted marshmallow, crème brûlée, and vanilla with a clean finish. As far back as the 1600’s, rum was referred to as “kill-devil,” and the Outer Banks town of Kill Devil Hills is believed to be named for the shipwrecked cargos of rum from the Caribbean that would wash up along its shores. Lighthouses and technology have made those waters safer, but thankfully, Outer Banks Distilling is keeping the tradition of rum in the Outer Banks alive.
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