Hi. I'm going to show you how to make this incredibly delicious brown butter
banana bread. Start by melting the butter on the lowest heat possible.
You want the butter to be fully melted before you increase the heat, and when you increase the heat,
it should look like this at a medium-low heat. You're going to allow the butter to cook,
stirring occasionally to ensure that the temperature remains the same throughout the melted butter.
The butter will start to boil and it will crackle. That's a sign that you're on your way to browning your butter. As
the butter heats up, be sure to stir it occasionally, especially along the sides of the pan.
Some of the brown, some of the butter will brown on the sides of the pan,
so you want to move everything around, again to ensure that the temperature is generally the same throughout the butter.
This will make for a more consistent brown butter. During this process
all we are doing is evaporating the water from the butter so that the milk solids drop to the bottom and start toasting in the
fat of the butter. Once the butter starts to brown, it does go pretty quickly,
so don't walk away and keep your eye on the pot. Once it goes from brown to burnt,
there is no going back and you have to start over. As
it gets hotter, it will start to foam. That's a sign that you're really
really getting close to being done. When
it foams, it will be a little more difficult to push it away to see what's going on underneath,
but just keep at it. You can see here in the bottom of the pan
the brown specks that are forming. That means we are just about done. Once
it's fully brown and before it ever gets the chance to start burning,
turn the flame off and immediately move the butter and pour it into a heatproof container so that it stops cooking.
Allow the butter to get to room temperature before putting it in the refrigerator to harden it up a little bit.
It should only take about 30 minutes or so in the refrigerator.But you can make this up to 48 hours in advance. Before you
start making the batter, grease your pan. I like to use the remaining one tablespoon of butter from the full stick of butter to grease
the pan. It just adds more flavor, it uses up that remaining butter and it releases from the pan beautifully. To
make the banana bread, first mash up the bananas. I prefer not having chunks of bananas in my banana bread,
so I mush it up really well. If you prefer chunks, mush it up less.
Next,
whisk together all the dry ingredients. That's the flour, baking soda, baking powder and the salt.
Then, in a large bowl, you're going to cream together your room temperature
solidified brown butter with the brown sugar. You
want to beat this very well so that the butter is fully incorporated into the sugar.
Next, beat in the eggs until the mixture is very well incorporated,
it looks nice and fluffy, then
beat in the mashed up banana and, again, mix it very thoroughly.
I should mention that although I'm using a hand mixer here, you can certainly use a stand mixer or even do this by hand.
Then mix in about half of the dry ingredients. You want to mix it just until the flour is almost fully absorbed.
Then add in all of the sour cream mix that in until that is almost fully absorbed.
Then add in the rest of the flour mixture and mix until the flour is no longer visible.
I like to do the last bit of mixing in by hand so that I avoid over mixing with an electric machine.
Then pour the batter into the prepared buttered pan and use a metal spatula to smooth out the top. To
ensure that you get that sort of iconic top, use the spatula and just go in about an inch or so and drag it down
the middle. That will allow the air to escape directly from the center
to give you that gorgeous top. When it comes out of the oven, allow it to cool completely, then slice and enjoy!