Brown butter banana cake

For me, banana cake is simply a way to use up bananas that have seen better days. Which is fine, since those super brown bananas are ideal for banana cakes/bread, but recently I felt like a special little kick, and also, it was my cousin’s birthday. I have since made it again, this time with more banana, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to my plain old recipe again. Brown butter and banana are meant to be. To tear them apart now would be wrong. I dare you to provide me with a recipe without brown butter that proves me wrong, anyway.

The flavor bible agrees with me, by the way. Annoyingly the pictures make the cake look dry, but I can assure you it is not.

Of course, you can easily make this dairy free. I basically just knocked off the “ml” and popped on “g” on the end of the vegetable oil measurement from the standard banana cake recipe I use (the link is to the date and chocolate version, but omit those and you have my lazy go-to solution for brown bananas). With brown butter however, the cake is denser but still soft, moist without being soggy at all, and has a little background flavour that is truly wonderful. When you cut into it, you’ll understand. When you bite into it, you’ll agree with me. Especially if you’ve also covered it in chocolate ganache icing, which is incidentally the easiest yet most luscious icing ever. Plus the leftover ganache can be used to make truffles! Admittedly it just gets eaten with a spoon though >.>

Brown butter banana cake

makes one round 8″ cake

Preheat oven to 170C (340F), with a rack centred. Very generously grease a round 8″ springform cake tin and set aside.

• 115g unsalted butter (very important here)*
• 1/2 c brown or raw sugar

*If you use salted butter, I reserve to laugh at you when you bite into a too-salty cake.

Melt butter in a small saucepan on medium heat, stirring with a spatula (scrape the bottom of the pan often) until brown flecks appear at the bottom. Remove from heat immediately and stir in sugar. Set aside to cool briefly. Meanwhile, beat the following in one medium sized bowl:

• 3 very ripe bananas, mashed (should be brown almost all over)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Stir the brown butter/sugar mix into the bowl until fully incorporated. Sift over the following in four lots, whisking each addition in and fully incorporating before adding the next lot:

• 1 1/2 c plain flour
• 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• pinch salt

Bake on centre rack for 35-45 minutes until the top is golden brown and a knife inserted comes out clean. Cool on a rack for fifteen minutes before removing ring (if you’ve greased the tin properly it should come off easily). Cool completely before removing base. Serve drizzled with ganache, or if covering the whole cake, head to my ganache post.

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