Real Life Pins: Banana Bread Bars with Brown Butter Frosting

It never fails. Every single time we buy bananas, we buy too many. We always say we will eat them before they go bad, but unfortunately for me, I pretty much like bananas that are still slightly green..and then anything after that is overripe. Brendan simple forgets about them, so we’re always left with tons of bananas left over on the counter. I was getting tired of making banana bread and wanted to find something a little more interesting to use up our old bananas. I found (on Pinterest of Course) this yummy recipe for Banana Bread Bars with Brown Butter Frosting. They had me at brown butter frosting…anything with brown butter is simply amazing so I knew I had to try these. These taste best warm out of the oven…but I refrigerated them for about a week and they were still delightful. The key to these is using lots of super ripe bananas…I used 4 and could have even used 5.

 
Recipe Courtesy of The Girl Who Ate Everything

Ingredients for Bars

• 1-1/2 c. sugar
• 1 c. sour cream
• 1/2 c. butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 4 ripe bananas, mashed
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 c. all purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 c. chopped walnuts

Brown Butter Frosting:

• 1/2 c. butter
• 4 c. powdered sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp. milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Grease and flour 9×13 glass baking dish.
3. In a large bowl, beat together sugar, sour cream, butter, and eggs until creamy.  Blend in bananas and vanilla extract.  Add flour, baking soda, salt, and blend for 1 minute.  Stir in walnuts.
4. Spread batter evenly into pan.  Bake 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.
5. For the frosting, heat butter in a large heavy saucepan (preferably a le creuset type pan) over medium heat until boiling.  Let the butter turn a delicate brown and remove from heat immediately. You will see the butter start to form little brown bits at the bottom of the pan, this is when you should remove it from the heat.
6. Add powdered sugar, vanilla extract and milk directly into the pan. Whisk together until smooth (it should be thicker than a glaze but thinner than frosting).
7. Once the bars have cooled slightly, spread the frosting over the bars.

Enjoy!