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Baked Bananas
6 bananas 1 cup sugar 1 cup hot water 1/2 cup red cinnamon candies 1 lemon (juice) 1 tablespoon shortening Peel bananas and lay in a greased pan. Bring the other ingredients to a boil and pour over the bananas. Bake for 50 minutes. Serves 6.
A candy-syrup baked banana from the era when red cinnamon drops were a pantry staple. The syrup does all the work, so get it fully dissolved before it goes into the pan.
- Oven temperatureNo setting is given. A moderate oven, 350F, suits this: hot enough to reduce the syrup, gentle enough that the sugar does not scorch on the pan edges.
- Red cinnamon candiesThese are the small hard cinnamon imperials still sold as "red hots." They supply both the heat and the scarlet colour; half a cup is about 3 oz. Cinnamon-flavoured jelly candies will not dissolve the same way.
- Dissolve the candies fullyHold the sugar, hot water and candies at a boil, stirring, until no grit remains at the bottom of the pan. Undissolved candies sink and set into hard beads under the fruit.
- Baking timeFifty minutes will collapse ripe bananas into a purée. Use firm, barely yellow fruit, and expect 20 to 30 minutes to be enough if yours are soft; the dish is done when the syrup has thickened and clings.
- ShorteningVegetable shortening was a common fat in recipes of this period. Butter works and tastes better here, since there is no ratio to protect.
- Pan and arrangementLay the bananas in a single layer in a shallow dish, no more than 9 by 13 inches, or the syrup spreads too thin to glaze. Halve them lengthwise if they are long.
- ServingSix servings, hot, with the pan syrup spooned over. Cream or plain cake cuts the sweetness, which is considerable: a cup of sugar plus the candies.
Baked bananas belong to the stretch of American home cooking, roughly the 1920s through the 1950s, when bananas had become cheap and available year-round through Central American shipping and cookbooks were still working out what to do with them beyond eating them out of the skin. The red cinnamon syrup echoes cinnamon-apple cookery, where the same candies were used to redden and spice poached apple rings; the result looked bright on the plate and cost very little.