A Warmly Spiced Banana Bread from a New 'Milk Street' Cookbook

Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Television airs on WTTW Saturdays at 3:00 pm and is available to stream via the PBS app.
Get more recipes, food news, and stories by signing up for our Deep Dish newsletter.

The new Milk Street Bakes cookbook gathers recipes, techniques, and flavors that the team at Christopher Kimball's Milk Street has learned from chefs and home cooks around the world. There's Amalfi-style lemon cake, or chocolate and tahini babka, or the Brazilian cheese bread pão de queijo. "They're bouncy and airy and they've got savoriness from the cheese, but they don't fill you up too much," says Milk Street director of education Rosemary Gill of the pão de queijo, which she recommends as an appetizer for a dinner party or holiday meal. 

As an educator, she appreciates the through-line of different techniques used consistently throughout Milk Street Bakes, she told us on a recent trip to Chicago. "If you brown butter in the Swedish sticky chocolate cake, you also brown butter in our brown butter-cardamom banana bread or brown butter mochi with coconut. You’re not going to learn a skill and not use it again.” 

Try the banana bread below – and then you can continue to practice browning butter in the other recipes. The holidays are here, after all, offering plenty of opportunities to bake and share new recipes with others. 

Browned Butter-Cardamom Banana Bread

From Milk Street Bakes by Christopher Kimball. Copyright 2024 by CPK Media, LLC. Used with permission of Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.

For a more flavorful banana bread without more effort, we paired one of banana’s most complementary spices, cardamom, with nutty browned butter. Blooming the spice in hot butter intensified the flavor. For just the right texture, we found we needed two leaveners. Baking powder gave the bread lift; baking soda resulted in a well-browned top and a pleasantly dense crumb. While we preferred the deeper flavor of dark brown sugar, light brown works just as well. Sprinkling granulated sugar over the top of the loaf just before baking created a crisp, brown crust that we loved.

Don’t forget to remove the saucepan from the heat before adding the cardamom and mashed bananas. This ensures the butter and pan will cool sufficiently so the eggs won’t curdle when whisked in.

Ingredients

113 grams (8 tablespoons) salted butter, plus more for the pan
260 grams (2 cups) all-purpose flour, plus more for the pan
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cardamom
533 grams (2 cups) mashed ripe bananas (from 4 or 5 large bananas)
149 grams (3/4 cup) packed dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon white sugar (optional)

Directions

1. Heat the oven to 350°F with a rack in the upper-middle position. Lightly coat a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan with butter. Dust evenly with flour, then tap out the excess. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

2. In a medium saucepan over medium, melt the butter. Once melted, cook, swirling the pan often, until the butter is fragrant and deep brown, 2 to 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and immediately whisk in the cardamom. Carefully whisk in the mashed bananas (the butter will sizzle and bubble up). Whisk in the brown sugar and vanilla. Add the eggs and whisk until well combined. Add the butter-banana mixture to the flour mixture and, using a silicone spatula, fold until just combined and no dry flour remains.

3. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and sprinkle evenly with the white sugar (if using). Bake until well browned, the top is cracked, and a toothpick inserted at the center comes out clean, 50 to 55 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then turn out
the loaf and cool completely before serving. Cooled bread can be wrapped tightly and stored at room temperature for up to 4 days or refrigerated for up to 1 week.