Ooey Gooey Bananas Foster French Toast Casserole

Banana Foster French Toast is an over-the-top breakfast casserole with sweet caramelized bananas and a custardy bread pudding. It tastes as wonderful as it sounds, and is great when you have house guests. This recipe is prepped the night before and refrigerated overnight. Before serving, just pop it in the oven, and you’re ready to eat in no time!

 

You’ll go bananas for this Banana Foster French Toast Recipe 

Bananas foster is a classic dessert of caramelized bananas. This recipe serves up yummy bananas foster, without the rum, in French toast form. The result is a perfectly sweet (but not too sweet) breakfast treat that tastes as good as it looks.

This recipe is wonderful for a weekend brunch or a holiday breakfast. Served with some candied bacon it’s always a hit.

While the taste is similar to bananas foster, it’s not nearly as sweet, so you can add some toppings or eat it as is. It’s similar to traditional french toast in that the bread is soaked in a custard, but that’s about where the similarities stop. It’s almost like bread pudding in texture.

What is bananas foster french toast?

Bananas foster is a quintessential southern dessert, traditionally made by caramelizing sliced bananas in brown sugar, butter, and rum, then flambéing it by setting it on fire for a few seconds.

This bananas foster French toast recipe is made a bit differently but still manages to create similar flavors.

This is a breakfast casserole that’s baked in the oven. Melted butter, sliced bananas, and spices are spread into a casserole dish and topped with milk and egg-soaked challah bread. The casserole is refrigerated overnight, then it’s simply baked before serving.

Because you do all the prep the night before, this recipe is excellent for busy family mornings or holidays when you want to serve a beautiful breakfast but don’t want all the cleanup.

Why You’ll Love This Breakfast Casserole

• It’s a bit fancy! This recipe is easy to make but looks impressive!
• It’s prepped the night before.  You do the bulk of the work ahead of time, so baking and serving this recipe is a breeze.
• It’s sweet, but not too sweet! While bananas foster is a dessert recipe, this is a sweet breakfast dish.
• You can use up your leftovers. This is a great way to use up leftover bread, the staler the better to soak up the custard.

Ingredients You’ll Need

• Challah Bread – Challah is a heavy, yellow-toned bread. You can find Challah in most bakeries and grocery stores. If you can’t find Challah, you can substitute with brioche, sourdough, or even dense white bread. Challah is a great choice for this recipe because it’s a dense, rich, eggy bread that soaks up the egg and milk mixture very well.  Challah is also a bit sweet, so the flavor is lovely for a sweet breakfast recipe like this one.
  
• Bananas – Buy 3 large bananas a few days before you want to make this recipe. When the bananas are fully yellow with just a few brown spots, they’re perfect. Over ripe bananas will turn mushy when cooked, so use ripe but not over-ripe bananas.
  
• Cream – Heavy cream will make the creamiest, custardy French toast casserole. Half and half will also work in a pinch.
  
• Brown Sugar – You can use light brown sugar or dark brown sugar for this recipe, dark brown sugar will give it more of a molasses flavor.
  
• Pecans – You don’t have to include pecans, but they provide a nice crunch and texture.
  
• Pantry Staples – butter, cinnamon, allspice, milk, eggs, vanilla.

How to make a Bananas Foster French Toast Casserole

Step 1: Prepare your bananas.

Mix together melted butter with brown sugar, cream, spices, and pecans. Then, fold the sliced bananas into the mixture.

Add the banana mixture to the bottom of a baking dish.

Step 2: Prepare your bread.

Spread your cut bread over the top of the bananas. Then, pour a mixture of milk, eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla over the top. If the bread is soft, cut it and place it in an oven at 200º to dry it out.

Step 3: Refrigerate.

Place the casserole in the fridge overnight.

Step 4: Bake.

Bake the French toast until it’s cooked through. To finish the dish, you can turn the finished French toast out onto a rimmed baking pan and place it under your oven broiler to caramelize the top.

Serve and enjoy!

A Few Recipe Notes

• If you’re using a glass baking dish, let it sit on the counter to come to room temperature before placing it in the oven.
• When broiling your casserole, watch it very carefully. The sugars in the dish can burn fast, so when you see the top browning and the bananas starting to bubble, remove it. Be careful! It will be very hot.
• Fresh Challah will work, but stale bread will work even better! If your bread is a day or two old, it will soak up the egg mixture better.
• You don’t have to invert the casserole and broil it. Instead, you can serve it in spoonfuls directly from the pan.

If you loved this recipe, give it a star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating! Also, snap a picture of your finished dish and share it with me on Instagram using the hashtag #butterandbaggage and tagging me @butterandbaggage.