This is the ultimate indulgent dessert to make if you want maximum results with minimum effort. Caramelized bananas perfumed with dark rum make this divine bread pudding a must. I promise you will be whisked away to your favorite Caribbean destination in no time. 

I was invited not long ago by another Colombian food blogger to participate in a #breadpuddingchallenge. The idea was to address the issue of stale bread and food waste. 

I hate food waste, but truth be told, 9 out of 10 times I end up grocery shopping right around the time I should be having lunch. I also tend to forget to tear out my grocery list from the grocery notepad that hangs on my fridge door, so I end up buying way more food than I need. 

This means I have to get extra creative to cook, store, and sometimes even unload batches of food to neighbors and friends. 

That being said, stale bread has never really been an issue for me. For starters, I've never really been much of a bread person. Cake, on the other hand, is my weakness. And frankly, Frenchie devours bread like nothing you have ever seen before. 

That man will polish off a whole loaf of sourdough in half a day. It goes so fast sometimes I wonder if he's stashing it in his closet instead of eating it. 

Furthermore, saving stale bread in pudding always seemed so counter-intuitive. The use of eggs, milk, sugar, cream, and fruit for a couple of slices of dry bread didn't seem cost-effective. 

But I was challenged, and because I am so naturally competitive, I just had to participate. 

So I began thinking, how could I take something so very British like bread pudding and give it a Colombian spin? 

I thought about coffee, chocolate, and passionfruit for a while. But then it struck me, why not go for a full-on Caribbean vibe? I'm talking bananas, and rum, and arequipe aka dulce de leche to all you non-Colombians. 

The truth is, I had a couple of over-ripe bananas sitting on the counter waiting to be made into banana muffins when I remembered my father's Bananes Flambées.

Growing up, I disliked Bananas Foster with every inch of my body. Thinking back, it probably has something to do with the fact that kids don't usually gravitate towards boozy desserts. 

Unfortunately for me, dad's Bananes Flambées were on the menu more often than not.

This is how it usually went down.

On Friday, my father would announce that those perfect sunshine-yellow bananas sitting in the fruit bowl were over-ripe. My brothers and I would argue that they looked perfect for a chocolate sundae. 

As a side note, my father likes under-ripe fruits and veggies. Bananas have to be a yellowish-green for him to enjoy, tomatoes that started blushing are way too ripe for him, and he takes his mangoes as soft as rocks. 

So when it came to Bananas Foster, it didn't matter that we outnumber him 3 to 1, we always lost that battle. My mother would intervene. She would promise us to go out for a sundae, and then agree with my father while persuading him to let the bananas sit on the counter for a couple more days.  

This was diplomacy at its best.

But then came the dreaded Sunday dinner. A dinner we could not escape, after all, Monday was a school day. 

After dinner, my dad would jump up and grab a pan, the butter, some sugar, the rum, and the not-so-over-ripe-bananas. 

First, he would melt the sugar with butter until he had a nice caramel, then the bananas went in that lovely caramel sauce. Up to this point, we were all very enthusiastic about bananes flambées. But alas, out came the rum.

My father was never a drinker, in fact, I think the last time he had a beer was well over twenty years ago, yet when making bananas foster, he would always go heavy-handed on the rum.  

Truth be told, he had a bit of a pyro streak, aka meaning, he loved flambeing all-the-dishes. Think sugar plum pudding at our "Christmukah" (Christmas + Hannukah) celebration. Crêpes Suzette was also a classic at our house. And now that I think about it, dad was not a stranger to Steak Diane, and on one or two occasions that my mom made Baked Alaska, my father jumped on the opportunity to torch my mother's over-the-top ice cream.

But I'm going a bit off-topic here. 

My ten-year-old-self hated spirit-soaked desserts. It took me many decades to reconcile with boozy desserts and banana flavor anything other than plain bananas. Yeah, I was that person who would turn down banana bread and banana cream puffs. 

But not anymore. 

I wish I could go back in time and enjoy my father's Banane Flambées. He certainly poured so much enthusiasm and love when he made them, despite his offspring's dislike. 

But seeing as how impossible that is I will have to content myself with this dad-inspired banana rum bread pudding and hope that the next time I'm in Bogotá he will make me some Bananas Foster and play some of our old family videos.  

If there is something that man loved even more than flambeeing things that would be recording every second of our very happy childhood. 

So without furter ado here’s my dad inspired Banana Rum Bread Pudding.