Browned Butter Buttermilk Banana Bread with Strawberry Butter -- The Bread That Waits for the Jam

June, and the first zucchini appeared on Tuesday. I greeted it in the way you greet the beginning of something you know the arc of: with appreciation for the start and a clear awareness of what the middle becomes. The first zucchini: small, tender, excellent. By July there will be too many. By August people will stop accepting them at the fence. But this first one: grilled with olive oil and herbs and good salt, simple and right. The season has started.

Made the rhubarb jam — the sixth year. Helen's recipe, the same hexagonal jars, the same process that has become ceremony. The smell of it cooking fills the kitchen with May even in early June when June is already trying to be itself. Six jars. One opened immediately, spread on the bread I'd made Friday. The others distributed: Carol, Bill, Ted Marchand, the Hendersons. The giving-away of jam is part of making it. You make more than you need so that the making can reach past your own kitchen.

The blog has been getting good traffic from the maple season essay — it went out in March and has continued to find readers steadily. A writing professor in Vermont wrote to say she'd assigned it to her class for its description of craft and time. I wrote back to say I was honored, which I was. You write something in a sugar house about forty years of doing a thing and it ends up in a writing class. That seems like exactly the right place for it.

The bread I’d made Friday — the one that received the first open jar of rhubarb jam — has become as much a part of the ritual as the jam itself. You need something worthy of six years of ceremony, something with enough depth to carry the fruit without disappearing under it. This browned butter buttermilk banana bread is that bread: it asks to be made on a slow morning, it fills the kitchen the way jam-making does, and the strawberry butter alongside it is its own small gesture toward the season coming in. Make it when you have jam to open. Make more than you need.

Browned Butter Buttermilk Banana Bread with Strawberry Butter

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 60 min | Total Time: 1 hr 20 min | Servings: 10 slices

Ingredients

• For the Banana Bread:
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 3 very ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 1/4 cups)
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup buttermilk, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• For the Strawberry Butter:
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
• 3 tablespoons fresh or good-quality strawberry jam
• 1 tablespoon powdered sugar
• Pinch of fine sea salt

Instructions

1. Brown the butter. Melt the butter in a small light-colored saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Continue cooking until the butter foams, then turns golden and smells nutty, about 5–7 minutes. Watch it carefully. Pour immediately into a large mixing bowl to stop the cooking, and let cool 10 minutes.
2. Preheat and prep. Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan with butter or non-stick spray and line with a strip of parchment paper for easy lifting.
3. Mix the wet ingredients. Whisk the mashed bananas and sugar into the cooled browned butter until combined. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking after each. Stir in the buttermilk and vanilla until smooth.
4. Combine the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and fold gently with a spatula until just combined — a few streaks of flour are fine. Do not overmix.
5. Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake 55–65 minutes, until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs. If the top browns too quickly, tent loosely with foil after 40 minutes. Cool in the pan 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before slicing.
6. Make the strawberry butter. While the bread cools, beat the softened butter with a fork or hand mixer until smooth and fluffy. Add the strawberry jam, powdered sugar, and pinch of salt and beat until fully combined and pale pink. Taste and adjust sweetness. Transfer to a small dish. Refrigerate if not serving immediately; bring to room temperature before serving.
7. Serve. Slice the cooled bread and serve with generous swoops of strawberry butter alongside. This bread is excellent the day it is made and even better the next morning, when the crumb has settled and the browned butter flavor deepens.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 340 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 44g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 220mg