Baked Banana Rum Fritters

Ok, so after a long hiatus from cooking much other then vegetarian chili, I decided it was time to buy some fruit. One cannot live on beans and tomatoes alone (or maybe one can, but one should still probably eat some fruit occasionally,) so I bought a bunch of beautiful organic bananas. Aand then promptly forgot about them. You see, Agata and I discovered that if you add chili to nachos and throw on some cheese.. bam! whole new food. No need to eat the fruit. See what winter does to me? It's not pretty.

So now the bananas are starting to look a bit sad. If winter has two rules in my house, they are #1) big batches of chili and #2) spiced rum in everything. Having already explored rule #1 in relation to the aforementioned bananas with limited success (the bananas remain uneaten), I decided to explore rule #2, wherein the bananas are combined with spiced rum. Resounding success!

These fritters are best eaten warm, in great quantities, and along with a hot rum toddy.. They are simultaneously crispy and soft with lots of sweet baked banana. It's great.

Baked Banana Rum Fritters
based on a recipe by Nikki Gardner of DesignSponge

You'll need:

• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup dark rum
• 1 cup flour
• 3 eggs
• 5 bananas, cut into small pieces.
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar for dusting

1. Pre-heat the oven to 425. 

2. Prepare the dough. Combine sugar, butter, salt, milk and rum in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Once you've got in boiling, reduce the heat to low and dump in the flour, all at once. Stir the mixture, which will pull away from the edges of the saucepan and stick together in about 30 seconds. Remove the pan from the heat and beat in the eggs one at a time, stirring until the dough is completely smooth after each addition.

3. Fold the banana into the dough. Butter a baking sheet. Make them really banana-y, its better that way. Maybe 70% banana to 30% dough? These fritters are really a celebration of all things banana - the dough is just to stick the whole thing together. Form the dough into small balls, about 1-2 inches in diameter, and put them on the baking sheet.  This is a messy process (although I suppose I could have used a spoon).

4. Bake until crisp and brown, 10 to 15 minutes.

5. Serve hot, sprinkled with icing sugar. 

Enjoy (and hope that spring comes soon).