Browned butter banana bread with a swirl of vanilla butter is life changing. So delicious you’ll need to make two, one to eat immediately and one for later. Browned butter baked with bananas is even better with a swirl of vanilla infused butter.
I had good intentions of making banana bread to take to a friend who is recovering from surgery. However, once it came out of the oven, it was gone before I could share it. Instead of eating just one slice, everyone, including me, just had to have two. We were still talking about it days later. I had to make another batch for my friend. However, my bananas weren’t quite ripe enough, so I read about how to ripen them in the oven. I’ll never be worried about buying green bananas again as this technique is easy and magically ripens your bananas. I think the flavor is better than when you just have old bananas.
How to ripen bananas:
To ripen the bananas, just place them in their peels on a cookie sheet on parchment paper and let them cook for about 15 minutes until the peelings are completely black. Let them cool a bit and remove the peelings. The bananas will be almost runny but don’t worry, they will be perfect. No more waiting for your bananas to ripen. Now you can make banana bread any time you want.
What makes this banana bread a little better than most is the browned butter, toasted pecans and honey. I don’t like frosting on banana bread, so instead I made vanilla butter, because the only thing better than a warm slice of banana bread is a slice with vanilla seasoned butter. The second time, I doubled the recipe to make sure I had enough to take to my friend.
While banana bread might seem boring, it’s been around for a long time for a good reason. Adding something so simple as browned butter and then serving it with a simple vanilla butter transforms this to a fabulous breakfast or brunch treat.
Adapted from Brunch @Bobby’s
PrintBrowned Butter Banana Bread with Vanilla Butter
Browned butter banana bread with a swirl of vanilla butter is life changing. So delicious you’ll need to make two, one to eat immediately and one for later. Browned butter baked with bananas is even better with a swirl of vanilla infused butter.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 1 loaf 1x
- Category: breakfast
Scale
Ingredients
- BREAD
- 5 tablespoons butter
- 1 ½ cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- 4 overly ripe bananas, skins should be black
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1 egg, beaten
- ¾ cup toasted pecans
- turbinado sugar, optional
- VANILLA BUTTER
- 8 tablespoons salted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 vanilla bean , split and seeds scraped
Instructions
- If skins of bananas are not black, preheat oven to 250º. Cook bananas in the peel on a cookie sheet for 15-25 minutes until skins are black.
- While bananas are baking, brown butter. In a small saucepan over medium heat, cook butter until it turns dark brown, about 5 minutes. Let cool slightly.
- Preheat oven to 350º. Butter and lightly flour a 9-inch loaf pan.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
- In a larger bowl, mash bananas with a fork. Add sugar, browned butter, honey, and egg, whisking to combine. Add flour mixture, and stir until just barely combined. Fold in chopped toasted pecans.
- Place batter in prepared pan and sprinkle the top with turbinado sugar.
- Bake for 30-40 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes and then remove to cooling rack to cool before slicing.
- Vanilla Butter:
- In a small bowl, add butter, sugar and vanilla seeds scraped from the pod. Mix with hand held mixer to combine. Let sit for an hour before serving.
- Adapted from Brunch @ Bobby’s
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