Brown Butter Banana Bread

Let's imagine that you were to brown six sticks of butter in one week. Hypothetically speaking, you'd watch six creamy blocks of pale yellow fat turn into a hot, bubbly liquid smelling of toasted hazelnuts and caramel. Going out on a limb here, I'm guessing you might start to wonder why we ever use unbrowned butter. Not that I would know.

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I have so much to tell you about brown butter (and desserts involving said item) that I'm a tad embarrassed. Does she make anything else? (Yes, I promise, she eats greens from time to time.) I'll spare you an onslaught of indulgence by plopping a salad in between, a bit of dietary comic relief so that you can enjoy brown butter and I can enjoy not getting made fun of.

So here's brown butter project #2 of the past 7 days: a brown butter banana bread, jacked up with bourbon (Deb made me do it) and plenty of fresh nutmeg. It's basically the recipe for my easiest cake ever, but it has mashed bananas, you bake it in a loaf pan, and it's got enough potassium in it that I proclaim it a very legitimate option for breakfast. Brown butter for breakfast? I'm like the best babysitter ever.

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Though I do not love bananas, I do love this banana bread. It tastes like whatever you ate as a child, but way better. Forget the canola oil, the mushy top crust, the strangely dry center. This is perfect. And if you have strong feelings about no banana bread being complete without chocolate chips, well jeez -- whoever said you can't improve on a good thing hasn't tried brown butter chocolate chip banana bread, am I right?

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Brown Butter Banana Bread adapted from Deb, who adapted it from Elise As much as I love cinnamon, I wanted the nutmeg and brown butter to be heard in this here choir, so I left noisy cinnamon out. Otherwise, it's basically banana bread with brown butter and bourbon. Stuffed my face on it, no big deal.

Oh, and hey: dark rum also goes really well, if you're out of bourbon or are feeling tropical. Give it a whirl.

3 to 4 ripe bananas 1/3 cup (5 1/3 tablespoons, but I won't judge if you up it to a round 5 1/2) salted butter 3/4 cup light brown sugar 1 egg, lightly beaten 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 tablespoon bourbon or dark rum 1 1/2 cup of flour 1 teaspoon baking soda Pinch of salt 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9x5 loaf pan or line with parchment paper.

Heat butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until butter melts completely. Then reduce heat to medium-low and continue cooking until foam mostly subsides and/or butter has turned golden brown and smells nutty, about 5-7 minutes. Watch carefully to ensure that milk solids don't burn. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

In a medium mixing bowl, mash bananas with the back of a fork until mostly smooth (a few lumps are okay). Add brown butter and brown sugar, and beat with a fork or whisk until completely combined. Whisk in egg, then vanilla and bourbon/rum, and give the mixture about 60 seconds of whisking to incorporate some air into the mixture.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. Then add dry ingredients to the wet ones and stir until all the dry ingredients disappear. (If you're feeling lazy, just add them directly to the wet ingredients. I won't tell if you won't.)

Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes, until a tester inserted into the cake's center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then lift or invert on a rack to cool completely. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Cinnamon Brown Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

Ask my colleagues what I did this weekend, and they'll tell you what I told them: relax, relax, relax.

And truly, that's what I intended to do. It's been an intense month at work, and I've been looking forward to this labor-day-without-weddings weekend for a long time. I had my sites set on the couch, a couple of movies downloaded on my ipad, and a bag of fantastic coffee beans ready for some pour-over action.

Turns out, I'm not so good at relaxing in the traditional sense. Sitting on the couch too long makes me twitch. I start poking around at the tomatoes on the counter, seeing if any is particularly soft and needs cutting. The second peaches in the fridge call my name and I'm up, flipping through cookbooks for that brown-butter cobbler recipe I've been meaning to try. And I can't even blame it all on the last glorious produce of summer. Partly, I'm just a mad woman. At 8 am I'm reading The Kitchn on my ipad, and at 8:15 I'm in the kitchen, mixing up dough.

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I've been eyeing a version of this loaf for over a year. Leite's Culinaria first posted a recipe for lemon pull-apart bread by Flo Braker, she of best tea cookies on the planet-fame. Those cookies are so good, I'll try pretty much any other recipe she writes. Lemon pull-apart loaf looked like cinnamon buns, minus the cinnamon, minus the bun, if you know what I mean. Doesn't that sound delicious and totally self-explanatory? Lemme try again: it's cinnamon bun dough, cut into squares, brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with lemon delicious stuff, and stacked into a loaf pan. As it bakes, the strips rise up and fan out, so the edges crisp and the sugar and butter caramelize. Now then: delicious, am I right?

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I made the loaf a couple weeks ago, and I added some chopped rosemary to the lemon-sugar mixture. Definitely a winner.

But then I made it again, and this time, I added a bit of cinnamon. Lemon and cinnamon work together to make fruit crisps sing; I figured they'd make a great pair in this bread.

Spoiler alert: Not so much. The lemon-cinnamon bread was 100% mediocre. 

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Turns out that what I really craved was the old faithful, cinnamon pull-apart bread. So on try #3, that's what I made.

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It's every bit as good as it should be, and, if you can believe this to possibly be the case, it doesn't even need the cream cheese frosting. Not that that should stop you.

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Cinnamon Brown Sugar Pull Apart Bread or Lemon-Rosemary Pull-Apart BreadAdapted from Leite's Culinaria

For the dough: 2 3/4 cups (12 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour 1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) granulated sugar 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet) instant yeast 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup whole milk 4 tablespoons (2 ounces) unsalted butter 1/4 cup water 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract 2 large eggs

Pick your filling...

For lemon filling: 1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar 3 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest (from 2 to 3 lemons, preferably organic) 1 tablespoons finely grated orange zest, preferably organic 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter, melted

For cinnamon-brown sugar filling: 1/2 cup brown sugar 2 tablespoons cinnamon 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) salted butter, melted

For the cream cheese frosting: 3 ounces cream cheese, softened 1/3 cup (1 1/4 ounces) confectioners’ sugar 1 tablespoon whole milk 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice, only if using lemon filling

Make the sweet dough:Stir together 2 cups (9 ounces) of the flour, sugar, yeast, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. In a small saucepan, heat the milk and butter over low heat just until the butter is melted. (You can also do this in a pyrex bowl in the microwave; the mixture needed about 1 minute in mine.) Remove from the heat, add the water, and set aside until warm, about 1 minute. Add the vanilla extract.

Pour the milk mixture over the flour-yeast mixture and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are evenly moistened. With the mixer still on low speed, add the eggs, 1 at a time, mixing just until incorporated after each addition. Stop the mixer, add 1/2 cup (2 1/4 ounces) flour, and resume mixing on low speed until the dough is smooth, 30 to 45 seconds. Add 2 more tablespoons flour and mix on medium speed until the dough is smooth, soft, and slightly sticky, about 45 seconds.

Sprinkle a work surface with 1 tablespoon flour and turn the dough onto the flour. Knead gently until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky, about 1 minute, adding an additional 1 to 2 tablespoons flour only if the dough is unworkably sticky. Place the dough in a large bowl, cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, and let the dough rise in a warm place (about 70°F) until doubled in size, 45 to 60 minutes. Press the dough gently with a fingertip. If the indentation remains, the dough is ready for the next step.

Make the filling: While the dough is rising, mix together in a small bowl either the sugar, lemon zest, and orange zest, or the cinnamon and brown sugar. Set aside.

Assemble and bake the cake: Adjust the oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan with parchment using this awesome trick from Alice Medrich: wrap the outside of the pan as if you were wrapping a gift, then take the folded parchment and ease it into the pan. Brilliant!

On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough into a 20-by-12-inch rectangle. Cut the dough crosswise into 5 strips, each about 12 by 4 inches. (A pizza cutter is helpful here.) Using a pastry brush, spread the melted butter generously over each strip of dough. Sprinkle 1 1/2 tablespoons of the filling over each rectangle. Then stack the 5 rectangles on top of each other. Work carefully when adding the crumbly zest filling, or it will fall off when you have to lift the stacked pastry later.

Slice crosswise through the 5-layer stack to create 6 equal strips, each about 4 by 2 inches. Fit these layered strips into the prepared loaf pan, cut edges up and side by side. (Flo Braker recommends fitting the pieces widthwise in the pan, which creates a taller loaf with lots of room on either side. I opted to stack them widthwise, which was quite tight but rose into a shape I liked more. Your choice.) Loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place (70 °F) until puffy and almost doubled in size, 30 to 50 minutes.  Bake the coffee cake until the top is golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then remove from the pan.

Frost the cake (optional): Combine cream cheese and sugar, and mash/whisk with a fork until fully incorporated. Add milk (and lemon juice, if making lemon bread), and mix vigorously with fork or electric mixer until very smooth. Set cake on the sheet of parchment used for baking, and drizzle with glaze using a fork or brush using a pastry brush. Serve warm.

Word to the wise: day-old slices of this bread could use a spin in the toaster, but boy are they amazing post-toast.

Double-Decker Strawberry Summer Cake

I fear that strawberry season may already be drawing to a close where many of you are. Ours are bursting-juicy and red, but my CSA folks warned me last week that we've got one more week of strawbs at best. What I'm saying is, NOW is the time to make this cake.

Let me stack another good reason on top of that one: very soon, turning on your ovens will stop being fun. That time has come for us, and I'm really quite glad about the extra cake I've got tucked away in the freezer, waiting to be some awesome people's dessert.

Did I say extra cake? I did. That's the other, other best part about this recipe: it makes 2 cakes, but you only need 1 at a time. To serve, you slice one of the cakes in half, pile some damn good fillings inside and on top, and voila: a double-deckered dessert made from just one cake. Use one, store the other in the freezer for up to six months. Ina says so, and she knows everything.

That's Ina Garten, domestic goddess and cake wizard. She's outdone herself with this one, an ode to everything that's perfect early in the summer: vanilla-scented cake, soaked with the syrup from fresh, perfect strawberries, topped with whipped cream that can still hold a peak. (In August, not so much. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

Ina plops plain raw strawberries on this one, but I like to macerate mine in some sugar beforehand. That way, they release some of that beautiful juice, which I spoon onto each serving. This is a cake to behold. Eat it on the porch, with very good friends and perhaps a glass of chilled sauternes. Bask in the glory of summer.

Here, I saved you a slice.

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Double-Decker Strawberry Summer Cakeadapted from Ina Garten's book, Barefoot Contessa Parties

Notes: As I explained above, this recipe makes two cakes, but each makes its own dessert. One cake easily serves eight people, so most of us will save the second cake for another time. If you do, double-wrap it and store it in the fridge for up to six months (or more likely, a hot hot summer day when the last thing you want to do is turn on the oven).

If you don't have strawberries, feel free to substitute raspberries, cherries, blueberries, or a mixture.

Lastly, remember that this is a summer cake, meant to be eaten and enjoyed without too much fuss. If you can't wait for the butter and eggs and sour cream to be perfectly at room temperature, don't sweat it.

For the cake: 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 cups sugar 4 eggs, at room temperature 3/4 cup sour cream, at room temperature 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 cup cornstarch 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1 teaspoon baking soda

To serve:: 1 pound very good strawberries, washed, hulled, and sliced 3/4 pint (1 1/2 cups) heavy cream 6 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla

Macerate the strawberries: Combine the strawberries and 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) of the sugar in a medium mixing bowl. Stir to incorporate, then set aside (at room temperature) while you make the cake.

Make the cakes: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Butter the bottom of two 8-inch cake pans. Then line them with parchment paper and butter and flour the lined pans.

Cream the butter and sugar on high speed in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy. On medium speed, add the eggs, 1 at a time, then the sour cream, zest, and vanilla, scraping down the bowl as needed. Mix well. Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda. On low speed, slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix just until combined.

Divide the batter evenly between the pans, smooth the tops with a spatula, and bake in the center of the oven for 40 to 45 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then remove to wire racks and let cool to room temperature. Wrap one cake in two layers of plastic and/or tin foil, and freeze for up to 6 months.

To serve the cakes: To make filling for one cake, whip the cream, 2 tablespoons sugar, and vanilla in a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment until the cream holds soft peaks. Slice one cake in half with a long, sharp knife. Place the bottom slice of the cake on a serving platter, spread with 1/2 the whipped cream and scatter with half of the macerated strawberries. Cover with the top slice of the cake and spread with the remaining cream. Decorate with the rest of the strawberries. Serve with some of the macerating liquid drizzled over each slice.

Monkey Gingerbread

You guys know about monkey bread, right? It's a pull-apart loaf made from bits of dough that have been rolled in lots of melted butter and sugar. Why it's called monkey bread is anyone's guess (though as Nancy Reagan not-so-famously claimed, the bread got its name ''Because when you make it, you have to monkey around with it." Yep, I think Nancy was onto something.)

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It's the right time for invoking presidents and first ladies; tomorrow is inauguration day, and this city is once again thrumming with the energy of the millions of people here to partake in celebration. We've got house guests, and we've got the tv tuned to the right channels, but this time, instead of venturing out into the cold to be part of history, we're taking it all in from our couch. We and our house guests are planning to cuddle up with something warm and sweet and chewy and delicious. It might just be monkey bread.

A good monkey bread is a thing of beauty, if you get a chance to see it before it's gone. One of my college roommates used to bring monkey bread back with her from winter break, at which point six no-longer-growing ladies would rush the kitchen and destroy the thing in seconds. I'd never made it from scratch before this year, but after discovering how easy it was to make, I haven't exactly held back.

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Now imagine that big pile of dough dipped in butter and sugar was also shot through with warm spices and molasses. I KNOW. What you end up with is a big pile of really flavorful dough, dipped in butter and sugar that - call me crazy - tastes way better than just plain brown sugar. Like some of the molasses secretly defected from the dough and bolted for the sticky bits.

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It's called Monkey (Ginger)Bread, and it came to me by way of Food52, of course. It's creator is a woman named Arielle, who has several winning recipes on the site (that you should check out, and make, and eat.) We ate the monkey gingerbread with chai tea, and were chai a slightly less adult beverage, I'd have felt it totally normal to go put on one of those onesie pajama ensembles with the grippy feet. What can I say? It's warm-cuddly food. Perfect for this weather.

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Monkey GingerbreadAdapted from Food52

For the dough: 1 packet (1 tablespoon) dry yeast pinch sugar 1/3 cup warm water 4 tablespoons (half a stick) butter, divided 1 cup whole milk 1/4 cup molasses 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons kosher salt 2 teaspoons ground ginger 2 teaspoons cinnamon 2 teaspoons ground cloves 1/2 teaspoon nutmegFor dipping: 1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter, melted 1 cup packed light brown sugarCombine yeast and a pinch of sugar with the 1/3 cup warm water in a small bowl. Stir to combine, and let sit until frothy.Combine 2 tablespoons butter, milk, and molasses in a small saucepan and heat until the butter has melted. Set aside to cool.In the bowl of a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Add yeast, then milk mixture, and mix for about 5 minutes, until completely smooth. (You can do this with a mixer or with your hands. At the beginning, the dough will be quite sticky; if dough is too sticky to work with, add up to 1/4 cup extra flour, tablespoon by tablespoon, until dough is workable.)Turn dough onto a counter and knead a minute or two longer, until dough is smooth and soft. Coat a large bowl with oil. Put dough in the bowl and turn to coat in oil, then cover with plastic and set in a warm spot until doubled, 1 to 2 hours (depending on the temperature: in winter, it took 2 full hours - in summer, about 1 hour 15 minutes.)Meanwhile, set the remaining 2 tablespoons butter out on the counter to soften, then use them to grease a bundt pan very, very thoroughly. Set the melted butter in one shallow bowl and the brown sugar in another.When the dough has doubled in volume, turn it onto a counter and gently pat it into an 8-inch square. Cut the dough into 64 pieces (into 8 vertically, then 8 horizontally). Dunk each square into the melted butter, then into the brown sugar, and pile the dunked pieces of dough into the buttered bundt pan, turning the pan as you work so the dough balls are distributed evenly. When all the dough has been dunked and piled into the pan, cover the pan and let rise for at least 1 more hour, until balls have puffed up toward the top of the bundt pan. (Mine rose to about 2 inches below the top of the pan; don't sweat how high they get - just make sure they look fluffy and light.)While the dough proofs, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake the monkey bread for 30-35 minutes, until the top is golden brown. Remove from the oven, cool for exactly 5 minutes, then turn onto a cake stand or platter and serve immediately. Monkey bread is not meant to be saved, so please: don't hold back. Eat up.