Izzy's - Bananas Foster

Bananas Foster - Banana Ice Cream with a Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Swirl and a Hint of Rum

Today is another pint from the Saint-Paul-based Izzy's Ice Cream.  The flavor today is called Bananas Foster.  Bananas Foster is a banana-rum flambé dessert and I have detailed the history of the New-Orleans-based dessert in a previous review.  It often makes for a fun ice cream flavor, so I grabbed this pint when it was available from Izzy's.  Their implementation features banana ice cream with a brown sugar and cinnamon swirl and a hint of rum.

Cracking open the lid, I see quite a bit of the brown sugar and cinnamon swirl right away.  That's nice.  The banana base has an off-white yellow color.  Digging in, the banana ice cream is quite good.  I've written before that I've noticed two types of banana flavor, a sweeter banana-cream-pie-like flavor and a more earthy banana-bread-like flavor.  It think this is actually closer to the sweeter banana flavor.  This sweetness adds contrast to the cinnamon swirl which is also quite good.  The mixture with the brown sugar gives it substance -- it almost feels like a half-dissolved doughy mix-in?  What I'm saying is that they have somehow managed to keep a powdery swirl intact despite being churned into the ice cream.  It's a good swirl and would probably work well with a few other bases.  The rum flavoring is fairly mild.  You could almost miss it in the cinnamon if you don't look for it.

This is an interesting implementation of a Bananas Foster.  Other brands such as Coolhaus and New Orleans Ice Cream (and the Jeni's Bananas Foster/Creme Brulee hybrid flavor) have included caramel in the implementation to represent the effects of the flambé on the brown sugar and butter in the dessert.  And often an earthier banana flavor is used to emphasize the burnt flavor.  Here the brown sugar and cinnamon are present in an unburnt form against a sweet banana base with only a mild rum flavor.  It's still a good combination though.  I don't mind the variation from the usual though.  Unique implementations are fun.