New Orleans Dessert..

[janabanana]

I'm making Gumbo for Bunco next month, and want to stay in the theme with dessert.. What are some special desserts they serve in NO with their gumbo?

[Rubelishous]

Re: New Orleans Dessert..

Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie

5 ounces semi-sweet chocolate (bar form)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon Bourbon (optional or to taste)
1 10-inch pie shell, par-baked
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 1/2 cups light corn syrup
3 large eggs
6 ounces unsalted butter

In a small sauce pan, over low heat, melt the butter. Add chocolate and stir until melted.

In a medium bowl, combine eggs, sugar, and corn syrup. Slowly stir in chocolate mixture. Stir until throughly combined. Stir in the bourbon.

Place chopped pecans in the par-baked 10" pie shell. Pour chocolate mixture over nuts to fill the shell. Gently stir to combine. Bake at 325°F until filling sets, approximately 20-30 minutes.


New Orleans Bread Pudding

1 loaf French bread
1 qt. milk
3 eggs
1 1/3 cups sugar (most recipes call for 1 1/2 to 2 cups, but the sauce is very sweet)
1 cup raisins
2 tablespoons vanilla
3 tablespoons butter

1 cup sugar
1 stick butter
1 egg
3 tablespoons bourbon or to taste

Tear bread in pieces and soak in milk for at least an hour. Beat eggs with sugar and vanilla. Add to bread mixture. Stir in raisins.

Melt 3 tablespoons butter in oblong baking dish. Pour pudding into baking dish and bake at 350 degrees F for approximately 1 hour. Let cool, then cut into serving cubes and place in individual bowls. Top with whiskey sauce and serve.

To make sauce melt 1 stick butter in top of double boiler. Add 1 cup sugar and stir until hot and sugar well dissolved. Add beaten egg and cook briefly. Remove from heat and add bourbon.

NOTE: The secret to this recipe is excellent French bread and good bourbon.


Bananas Foster

A quintessential New Orleans dessert, and a favorite among most locals. If you're a visitor to our city, don't feel like you're ordering a clichéd tourist dish.

4 tablespoons butter (1/2 stick)
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 bananas
2 ounces banana liqueur
4 ounces dark rum
Ground cinnamon
Vanilla ice cream (optional)
This dish really should not be prepared in the kitchen. It must be performed, in front of your guests. Use a chafing dish, and some kind of portable heat like Sterno. Don't be sloppy, and keep a fire extinguisher handy. There's no need to burn the house down just for dessert, but this really must be done right. I learned to cook this dish from Chef Joe Cahn at the New Orleans School of Cooking, and he spun dire tales of what befell those who dared sequester themselves in the kitchen when making Bananas Foster. Seriously, bad gris-gris will befall you if you deprive your guests of the spectacle. Plus, they'll talk for years about how cool you are to have made this for their dessert.
First, you should make some preparations. Peel a thin strip of peel from the bananas, and use your knife to slice the banana crossways into coins. Then replace the banana peel so that it looks untouched (as best as you can, anyway). This way, you can pretend to "peel" your bananas, and dump them into the put already cut, as if by magic. Cheesy, you ask? Well, it still looks cool, particularly if you're really nonchalant when you do this in front of your guests. If you insist, you can slice the bananas the classical way, quartering them by slicing thm lengthwise and then in half. I still think the other way is cooler.

Put your ground cinnamon into some kind of non-standard container, or even a little muslin bag, the better to "convince" your guests that it is, in fact, not cinnamon but voodoo dust, scraped from the tomb of Marie Laveau at midnight on All Soul's Day ... some kind of delightfully corny crap like that. Also, I recommend taking a cinnamon stick and grinding it fresh in a spice or coffee grinder instead of using pre-ground cinnamon. Sieve the result through a tea ball strainer to remove the larger pieces which won't grind finely. This will maximize the fresh, aromatic cinnamon flavor. If you use your coffee grinder, it'll also make your coffee taste great.

Now, to business ...

Melt the butter and add the brown sugar to form a creamy paste. Let this mixture caramelize over the heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in the banana liqueur. Heat until the liquor is warmed, about three minutes. Add the bananas, add the rum (preferably warmed), then ignite with a flourish and cook for about 1 - 2 minutes. Here's the showiest way to do this:

Using a long, bent-handled ladle, scoop up some of the warm liquor. Hold it a foot or two above the chafing dish and ignite the liquor in the ladle. VERY CAREFULLY, pour the liquor into the dish. A column of flame will descend from the ladle into the dish, which will ignite with a marvelous *poof*! Keep a pal nearby, subtly wielding a fire extinguisher. Try not to become a human torch in the process.

Otherwise, if you're too chicken (and I would never make fun of you for being too chicken to mess around with flaming alcohol), just ignite the rum in the chafing dish. It's safer.

Agitate to keep the flame burning, and add a few pinches of "voodoo dust" to the flame. The cinnamon will sparkle orange in the blue flame, and looks really neat.

Let the flames go out. Serve over ice cream if you wish, but some hardcores like me like it just like it is. Yum.

Variations: one may substitute any fruit for this dish that has a correspondingly flavored liqueur -- peaches, pears, whatever.

[janabanana]

Re: New Orleans Dessert..

Thanks Rube !!! Ya got me with the bread pudding !! Printing away !

[night-angel]

Re: New Orleans Dessert..

My mother in law (from New Orleans) always served bread pudding with jambalaya at her bunco parties (she was one god awful cook!)

[nuisance]

Re: New Orleans Dessert..

I'm looking at my "Roger's Cajun Cookbook" they mention Pecan pie, bread puddings, sweet potato pie, and Pootsin, which a different type of bread pudding.


Pootsin

8 slices old bread
3 bananas (chopped)
1 cdup coconut
3 eggs (seperated)
1-1/2 tsp vanilla
1 can evaporated milk
4 cups milk
1/2 can crushed pineapple
1-1/2 cups sugar 4 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda

Heat milk and pour over bread which has been broken up, mix togethe. Add egg yolks, pineapple, coconut, vanilla, evaporated milk, baking soda, 1-1/2 cups sugar and bananas. MIx well. Pour mixture into a couple of buttered pans and bake at 375° for about 1 hr or until the pies begin to brown.
Beat egg whites with 4 tbsp sugar. Pour over pies and return to 350° oven until topping begins to brown.
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This is my Sweet Potato Pie


SWEET POTATO PIE

2 CUPS SWEET POTATO, COOKED AND MASHED
4 EGGS, BEATEN
1 TSP SALT
1 CUP SUGAR
1/2 CUP BROWN SUGAR
1 TSP CINNAMON
1/2 TSP NUTMEG
1/2 TSP GINGER
1/2 TSP ALLSPICE
1-1/2 CUPS MILK
2 TBSP MARGARINE
2 UNBAKED PIE CRUSTS, 9 INCH

MIX ALL TOGETHER. POUR INTO 2 UNBAKED PIE CRUSTS AND BAKE 50 MINUTES.
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[LaurenB]

Re: New Orleans Dessert..

The best Bread Pudding I have ever had also had mini chocolate chips in it, and a kind of brandy sauce.........Man......It was SO good!!!!! I'll bet you could incorporate those two things into the recipe listed here and it would be yummy!!

Edited to say: Maybe it was Bourbon Sauce, and not Brandy.............

[janabanana]

Re: New Orleans Dessert..

Lauren, I saw a recipe with Rum sauce too...

Nu, That Pootsin looks good too! I never had sweet potato pie either..

[love all recipes]

Re: New Orleans Dessert..

Pralines

Recipe By :Love All Receipes
Serving Size : 0 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories :

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
1 pound brown sugar
1/2 pint whipping cream -- use in liquid form
4 tablespoons margarine
1 cup pecan -- break in pieces

Mix brown sugar and whipping cream with a fork, thoroughly. Microwave 6 minutes. Remove..stir..microwave 6 more minutes. Remove from microwave and add margarine and pecans. Stir until candy looses its gloss. The last stir..must stir long. Drop by teaspoon onto waxed paper. Makes 24 small ones.

[nuisance]

Re: New Orleans Dessert..

Jana, If You Like Pumpkin Pie, You'll Like Sweet Potato Pie, Most Of The Time, You Can't Tell Them Apart!

[StephanieM]

Re: New Orleans Dessert..

I love this town. My favorite desserts there are the banana's foster, the bread pudding, and I seem to recall a lot of pecan pie down there as well. I do love sweet potato pie though!