This brown butter banana bread recipe yields a moist, soft, and not-too-dense texture! This is the perfect banana bread recipe that uses those last two bananas & leftover sour cream in your kitchen.
How to Make a Moist & Soft Brown Butter Banana Bread
Studded with toasted pecan bits, this brown butter banana bread is moist, soft, and not too dense with an added depth of flavor from the brown butter. This is the perfect brown bread banana bread recipe that uses the last two overripe bananas in your kitchen, and the rest of that leftover sour cream in your refrigerator. Perfect for an easy breakfast snack everyone will enjoy!
This has always been my go-to banana bread recipe for my family! Every time I see two leftover, uneaten, overripe bananas still sitting on the kitchen counter, my brain immediately screams banana bread (…or banana bread cinnamon rolls, banana sheet cake, banana nut muffins… recipes still to come on those). It’s just the obvious thing to do when you don’t want perfectly good baking bananas thrown in the trash! Banana bread is already a tried and true classic breakfast snack, so why not jazz it up with some absolutely delicious brown butter?
Table of Contents – Moist & Soft Brown Butter Banana Bread
- What is Brown Butter?
- How Do I Make Brown Butter?
- Kitchen Equipment
- Ingredients for Brown Butter Banana Bread
- How to Make Brown Butter Banana Bread
- Tips for the Best Brown Butter Banana Bread
- Storage Instructions for Brown Butter Banana Bread
- More Recipes to Try
- Recipe
What is Brown Butter?
What is brown butter anyway? Here’s a little Bill Nye science-y moment for this post, but butter is primarily made of three different components– butterfat, water, and milk solids. Brown butter is made when you cook butter over a medium-low heat to toast the milk solids in the butter while evaporating some of the water content simultaneously. As a result, the butter develops a toasty, nutty aroma so wonderful that it makes me wonder why there isn’t a brown butter candle. I would actually buy so many of those.
Another perk of browned butter is that it creates an extra dimension of flavor in whatever recipe you choose to incorporate it in. One of my all-time favorite dishes I’ve ever had is butternut squash ravioli in a brown butter sage sauce. The browned butter elevates every dish!
How to Make Perfectly Browned Butter
So how do I make brown butter?
Making brown butter is actually quite simple! Only one ingredient required– butter! Here’s how you make your own brown butter at home:
- Add your unsalted (or salted if you prefer) butter, to a shallow saucepan over medium to medium-low heat. It’s a lot easier to brown butter in a pan that has a light-colored bottom so you can see the color of your butter better as it cooks, but a dark-bottomed pan works just as well.
- Let the butter melt completely. You’ll notice there’s a lot of large white foamy bubbles on the surface. There’s a fair bit of water evaporating from your butter as it cooks.
- Stir the butter slowly every so often— you want to make sure those milk solids we talked about earlier don’t sit in one place in the pan for too long and burn. We want toasty milk solids, not burnt!
- After a few minutes, you’ll notice the white foam dissipate a bit and the butter itself changes into a more golden color. This means we’re almost done! Once that white foam disappears, the butter will start to color more quickly.
- Once the butter reaches a deep golden-amber color and you can see the small bits of toasted milk solids at the bottom of the pan, immediately transfer your brown butter to a separate heat-proof bowl to cool. Remember to act quickly after your butter has browned— any extra time on the heat and you risk burning your milk solids and no one wants that!
And that’s it! You did it! You made perfectly browned butter!
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Kitchen Equipment for Brown Butter Banana Bread
The best part about this banana bread? No need to lug out your stand mixer or even an electric hand mixer— you just need a few simple tools that almost every kitchen has.
- Mixing Bowls – for this recipe, you only need two mixing bowls. I used a small bowl for mashing my bananas and then a larger bowl for mixing all of the ingredients together.
- Silicone Spatula – this is by far my most used kitchen utensil and the only one you’ll be needing for this recipe. It also comes in handy when folding in some of the ingredients in the batter.
- Shallow Pot/Pan – you’ll be needing this to brown your butter as discussed above! Again, it’s easier to see what stage/color your butter is at when you have a light-bottomed pan or pot, but a dark-bottomed pan or pot works too.
- 9×5” Loaf Pan – can’t make banana bread without a loaf pan!
Ingredients for Brown Butter Banana Bread
- Butter – I always use unsalted butter in my recipes! If you only have salted butter, make sure you don’t mix in the salt listed in the recipe.
- White Granulated Sugar – the foundation of so many dessert recipes… fine white granulated sugar!
- Eggs – I used large whole eggs for this recipe. No egg separating needed today!
- Vanilla Extract – as a rule of thumb, I typically use imitation vanilla extract or vanilla flavoring in batters that will be baked in the oven. Save that expensive and real vanilla extract for ready-to-eat components (like buttercream or custards) when you can truly taste the vanilla you added.
- All-Purpose Flour – all-purpose flour is the best choice for this recipe.
- Baking Soda – you’ll need baking soda for this recipe, not baking powder! Baking powder is a different ingredient that cannot be used as a 1:1 substitution for baking soda.
- Ground Cinnamon – banana bread and cinnamon… it just makes sense.
- Ground Nutmeg – something to add a little extra spice in there.
- Salt – I recommend using kosher salt for this recipe.
- Bananas – I used two very overripe bananas for this recipe. By overripe, I mean there was mainly brown covering 75% of the banana peel.
- Sour Cream – I prefer using full-fat sour cream.
- Chopped Pecans – my family always preferred pecans over walnuts, but the pecans can be substituted or omitted completely if you prefer.
How to Make Moist & Soft Brown Butter Banana Bread (Step-By-Step Video Guide)
Tips for the Best Brown Butter Banana Bread
- It’s best to start with room temperature ingredients. I know, I know. I always tend to skip this part too. However, if you want the best results, you should always start with room temperature ingredients unless stated otherwise in the recipe. When your ingredients are all room temperature, they do actually combine better when mixing. Just remember that.
- Keep a close eye on your butter when browning it. Once that initial white foam goes away, the butter will quickly begin changing color and darkening. Stir the bottom of the pan to keep those milk solids moving to avoid burning them.
- Transfer the brown butter immediately after finishing browning! Don’t let that butter get any darker than it needs to be. Transfer the butter out of that hot pan and into a heat-proof bowl.
- Let the brown butter cool before adding the rest of your ingredients. The last thing we want is small bits of cooked egg in our banana bread— patience is key here!
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Storage Instructions for Brown Butter Banana Bread
- Once your banana bread has completely cooled, you can store it in a gallon-bag or wrap it well in plastic wrap and leave it at room temperature.
- The banana bread will stay fresh for four to five days at room temperature. Alternatively, you can make your banana bread ahead of time and keep it in the freezer (plastic wrapped twice and then put into a gallon-size plastic bag) for up to three months.
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Moist & Soft Brown Butter Banana Bread
Equipment
- 1 silicone spatula
- 1 small sauce pot for browning the butter
- 2 mixing bowls
- 1 9 x 5" loaf baking pan
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter [113g]
- 1 cup white granulated sugar [235g]
- 2 ea whole eggs, room temperature [100g]
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 ½ cup all-purpose flour, spooned & leveled [215g]
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- ¾ cup sour cream [195g]
- 1 cup overripe medium-sized bananas (x2), mashed [230g]
- ½ cup pecans, chopped [70g]
Instructions
For the Brown Butter:
- Preheat your oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9x5" loaf pan and line with a long piece of parchment paper to allow the extra to hang over each long side of the pan. Set aside.
- In a small pot, melt the butter completely (½ cup or 1 stick) on medium heat. Let the butter cook, stirring constantly, until the butter gives off a nutty, fragrant buttery smell and becomes a golden-brown color. You should the small bits of milk solids at the bottom of the pot become toasted.
- Remove the browned butter from the heat and add to a large, heat-proof mixing bowl. Let cool until bowl is simply warm to the touch.
For the Brown Butter Banana Bread:
- Once your brown butter is cool, add the sugar (½ cup) and stir together with a spatula.
- Add in the whole eggs (x2) and vanilla extract (1 tsp). Mix until combined.
- Next, add the all-purpose flour (1 ½ cups), baking soda (1 tsp), salt (½ tsp), ground cinnamon (½ tsp), and ground nutmeg (¼ tsp). Stir into your butter mixture, scraping the sides of the bowl as you go, until smooth and no dry lumps remain.
- In a small separate bowl, mash the two peeled, overripe bananas (medium-sized) with a fork.
- Fold in the mashed bananas (1 cup), sour cream (¾ cup), and chopped pecans (½ cup) into the batter, scraping the sides/bottom of the bowl again. Once you no longer see streaks of banana or sour cream, you're good!
- Transfer the batter to the greased 9x5" pan you prepared earlier. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean or has a few moist crumbs. (Add a loose piece of aluminum foil on top of your banana bread if you see the top is getting too dark!)
- Let the banana bread cool in the loaf pan for 10 minutes before carefully inverting it out onto a wire rack to cool completely (if you can wait that long!)
Video
Notes
- This recipe uses baking soda, NOT baking powder. These are two different ingredients and can impact the quality of your bake.
- Keep a close eye on your butter when browning it! Even after you've finished browning your butter, it will continue to brown sitting in the hot pot so be sure to transfer the brown butter to a separate mixing bowl to cool.
- If, after 40 minutes or so, you notice the top of your brown butter banana bread is getting too dark, quickly cover the banana bread with a piece of aluminum foil and then return it to the oven so it can finish the baking process without getting any darker. (I cover my banana bread with foil after 45 minutes and let it finish baking covered.)
- Feel free to substitute the chopped pecans for walnuts if you prefer. Or if you're not a fan of either, you can also choose to omit them completely.