Earl grey banana bread

With whipped earl grey honey butter on the side.

I hold this recipe very dearly to my heart. For one, it’s infused with earl grey, which lends a bergamot oil and delicately creates an extra level of interest with every bite. Two, the earl grey is brought to life through brown butter, so there is a factor of nutty toasted-ness throughout the bread, but also important because fat is a carrier for flavor, ensuring the earl grey is brought to it’s potential. Three, because I’m a crazy earl grey girl, there is an early grey honey butter, whipped until pale and fluffy, to bring an insured bite of earl grey through each slice but definitely because whipped flavored butter is the best garnish for banana bread. I tried a batch with an earl grey glaze, but I found it too tedious because you have to wait until the banana bread is completely cooled to pour over the top so it hardens as a glaze and doesn’t dissolve into the top layer. WHO is going to wait 2+ hours after they’ve just baked banana bread to have a slice? Not me, no way, I’ll wait 10 mins and then I’m cutting into it and smearing a whipped butter over the top. Four, I like to reserve 1/2 cup of the mashed bananas and stir it through at the very end just before baking, so that there’s pieces of banana throughout the bread among the specks of earl grey.