Brown Butter, Blue Berry, Coconut Banana Bread

This turned out so good. You may want to brew extra coffee or tea.

Banana bread is such a classic warm and comforting loaf. The aromas drifting throughout the home makes me think of weekends and cups of coffee or tea even a big glass of cold milk. Thinking warm and smothered with butter melting into a fresh slice. Yes, I can close my eyes and think back to memories of simple weekends and banana bread breakfasts.

I developed this recipe by inspiration from one of my old church cookbooks. The kind where everyone donates their favorite recipes, mine was the banana bread.

The original recipe called for 1/2 Cup of softened butter. Well, mine was cold from the refrigerator. Then I had an idea, why not melt it and make my bread with brown butter. Next my bananas were so ripe they created this banana juice. I didn’t want to waste this beautiful liquid, so a banana glaze was born. Throwing in some blueberries and why not coconut? It works. Topping the warm bread with the thin glaze made it perfect.

Note: If you don’t want to make the brown butter (but you should!) then you can certainly use softened butter instead.

This brown butter, blue berry, coconut, banana bread hits the spot. Drizzled with banana juice glaze and you think you are in a fancy coffee shop.

Let’s talk brown butter. It’s easy, just keep an eye on it so it does not suddenly burn. But look, this one is perfect, golden with hints of caramel notes. You will make two separate batches. One for the bread the other for the glaze. Don’t double up on this, you will want all those yummy bits from the bottom in both your bread and glaze.

Still working on my photography. The bottle is filled with lots of vanilla beans to create my homemade vanilla. The bananas are extra ripe and made some banana juice when I smashed them. I strained the banana juice into a bowl for the glaze.

Gently stir flour into blueberries then add coconut.

Flour has been folded in.
Add blueberries and coconut into the banana mixture stirring gently.

Brown Butter, Blue Berry, Coconut Banana Bread

Servings: How thick do you want to slice it?
Time: Approximately 50 minutes
Difficulty: easy
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A banana bread you will want to make over and over again

Ingredients

Get ready:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Prepare loaf pan spreading cold butter all inside or use a baking spray.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. This will be the place where the bread will continue to cool, and you will drizzle the glaze. I usually put a rack under the sheet pan to protect the surface.

To make the Brown Butter – measure 1/2 Cup butter into small saucepan. Over low-medium heat stir constantly melting butter until it turns golden and small tan bits start to form on the bottom. Be sure to constantly mix preventing butter from burning. This should take about 5 minutes. Take off the heat and cool.

Banana Juice: If using really super ripe bananas for this recipe, I will smash the bananas in a small bowl. Then put them in a strainer over the bowl to collect the banana juice. Reserve the juice for the glaze. Recipe towards the bottom of the instructions.

Wet Ingredients

3 large Extra Ripe Bananas smashed with fork. (strain if using for banana juice – recipe above)
1 Cup Blue Berries
1/2 Cup Shredded Coconut (I used unsweetened)
1 Tablespoon All Purpose Flour (this is for the blueberries)
1/2 Cup Browned Butter (made from directions above)
1 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1/2 Cup Greek Yogurt

Dry Ingredients

1 1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Kosher Salt

Whisk the dry ingredients together.

Directions

In a small bowl gently stir to combine 1 Tablespoon flour into blueberries and then add coconut. Make sure to stir carefully not to crush blueberries. Set aside.
In another small bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cup flour, salt and baking soda to combine.
In a large separate bowl whisk together smashed bananas (do not use juice here), brown butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and Greek yogurt.
Add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients and stir together with a spoon. Do not overmix.
Gently stir in the blueberries and coconut.

*Note: It’s important not to over mix your batter. It may result with the loaf sinking in the middle. It will still taste good but not look as pretty.

Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.

Bake about 50 minutes. Use a cake tester or toothpick, it will be done if cake tester comes out clean.

Carefully remove from oven, let rest in loaf pan about 5 minutes. Remove bread from loaf pan and put on prepared sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Spoon glaze over warm bread, some will fall onto the parchment paper. Cool and enjoy!

Banana Glaze:

– 1/2 Cup Brown Butter – recipe above – 1 Cup Powder Sugar – Strained Banana Juice – use whatever it yields

In a small saucepan, make the brown butter, let cool slightly, add powder sugar and strained banana juice. Stir until smooth. You can thicken the glaze to desired consistency by adding more powder sugar.

Note: If your bananas are not ripe enough for the juice you can make glaze substituting with milk.