Bananas Foster Trifle

I wanted to make trifles out of my strawberry rum pound cake a couple weeks ago, but my stemless wineglasses proved to be less than satisfactory vessels for putting it all together. Nothing layered properly, and my fingers kept smearing stuff. So, I ordered a set of mini trifle bowls, and they arrived a few days ago.

What is trifle, exactly? It's basically a cake-based parfait, with layers of cake (usually pound or sponge), custard, fruit, gelatin, and whipped cream. Yum, right? I didn't have pound cake or sponge cake lying around, but since there was still some banana bread left over, I decided to make a Bananas Foster trifle.

I originally wanted to make the characteristic Bananas Foster rum sauce for my trifle, but that was a total botch. While it was cooking, I took my eye off the skillet and the sugar burned. The sauce, which had been smelling pretty good up to then, turned black, started smoking, and was basically totally ruined. Ugh. So, I scrapped the sauce and made do with banana bread, cooked bananas, and whipped cream. And you know what? Totally delicious. Banana lovers everywhere would go nuts for this sweet and creamy, intensely banana-y treat. Dan, who had already eaten pizza, chips and salsa, and cheesy bread, and insisted that he was too stuffed to eat more than a few bites of trifle, ate the whole bowl. Mini-bowl, but still.

Bananas Foster Trifle

Ingredients: (Makes 2 mini-trifles)

- 4 pieces banana bread, chopped into squares.
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 stick butter
- 1 dash cinnamon
- 1 dash cloves
- 1 banana, cut in half length-wise
- 1 cup heavy cream, whipped and sweetened.

Steps:

(1) Layer the bottom of each mini-trifle bowl with some of the chopped banana bread, in one even layer. Set aside.

(2) In a skillet, cook butter and brown sugar until simmering. Add spices.

(3) Place both halves of the banana into the skillet and spoon sauce over the top. Cook until a sugary crust forms on the outside of the fruit. Pull out and set aside.
** At this point you can keep cooking the sauce until it is thick and syrupy, then add it as one of your trifle components. Mine burned, so I left it out...
(4) Let bananas cool, then chop them into small pieces.
(5) Layer chopped bananas on top of the banana bread in the trifle bowls.
(6) Layer the remaining banana bread on top of the cooked bananas.
(7) Top with whipped cream. Sprinkle with cinnamon and serve.

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