Biscoff and Brown Butter Banana Bread
Is Banana Bread over? Has it had its day? I hope not because I created this little beauty and she deserves some attention. She might not be a March 2020 banana bread but she’s just as deserving of love.
I definitely wasn’t a trailblazer in terms of Biscoff alliance, but I’m a committed member of the party. It’s definitely knocked Nutella off the top spot of my ‘Spreads and Preserves’ leaderboard, and that’s saying something. It should come with some sort of addiction warning like on cigarette packets (ok, maybe that’s a bit too far) because I’ve gone through three jars of the stuff this month.
I’ve never been particularly loyal to a banana bread recipe in the past. I’ve tried a fair few, and they all were great, but I wanted to collate my favourite parts into one recipe.
Firstly, brown the butter. Always brown the butter. Brown butter takes regular butter to Wembley lasagne viral voice note levels of good. Niche reference there so if you don’t know what I’m talking about, please google and have a chuckle.
Secondly, adding Biscoff spread INTO the cake itself. Trust me.
Finally, this recipe uses buttermilk to make a more tender cake but greek yoghurt works too if you don’t have any on hand.
Oh, and you all know this, but the blacker the banana, the better the cake (unless it’s mouldy, then you’ve gone way too far). Spotty means sweet and the further you can take it, the better the cake is.
Now, go get your Biscoff on.
Ingredients
100g unsalted butter
75g caster sugar
55g light brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla (or free-pour like a mad man like we all do)
60g buttermilk (or Greek Yoghurt)
1 large or 2 small overripe bananas (approx 150g), mashed
80g plus 3 tbsp Lotus Biscoff Spread
150g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
Method
Brown the butter. Put the butter in a small saucepan and set over medium/high heat. Melt fully and continue to boil away while swirling the pan to avoid burning any of the milk solids that will fall to the bottom of the pan. Continue to cook until the bubbles become a cappuccino-like foam and the butter is deep amber. This will take about 3-5 minutes once boiling. You should be left with around 75g brown butter. Put into a medium heatproof bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer to cool and harden to room temperature.
TIP: you can speed this up by putting the butter in the freezer for about 15 minutes, mixing every 5 minutes until the butter is no longer in a liquid state.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F
TIP: use an oven thermometer to make sure your oven is at the right temperature. Oven’s vary a lot and some can be as much as 20°C out which will affect the success of any recipe.
Grease and line a standard 2lb loaf tin with baking paper, leaving an overhang over the sides.
Add the white and light brown sugars to the bowl with the butter and, either using an electric hand whisk or a stand mixer, mix on high for 3-5 minutes until light and fluffy.
Add the egg, egg yolk, buttermilk (or yoghurt), mashed banana, vanilla, and 80g biscoff spread and mix until fully incorporated.
Sift in the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated. Don’t overmix the batter once the dry ingredients have been added.
Pour into the prepared loaf tin and smooth out so the batter is evenly distributed.
Add teaspoon blobs (it’s the technical term) of the remaining Biscoff spread on top of the batter and swirl using a toothpick to create a snazzy pattern.
Put into the preheated oven and bake for 45-50 minutes. You can test if the cake is done if you insert a cake tester/metal skewer into the middle and it comes out clean.
Place on a cooling rack and let the cake cool in the tin for 15 minutes. Then, using the parchment handles, lift the banana bread out of the loaf tin and let it cool completely (or eat it warm - I won’t judge).
