Pin It & Spin It: Monkey Squares

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What do you do when you have two overripe bananas and one sweet-toothed boyfriend looking at you pleadingly? Banana bread, again? Muffins, no ingredients? Pinterest to the rescue!

The Pin: Monkey Squares

From: The Girl Who Ate Everything

The Recipe:

1 ½ cups sugar

1 cup sour cream
½ cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1 ¾ cups (3 or 4) ripe bananas, mashed
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon salt
½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour 10×15 jelly roll pan. Beat first four ingredients until creamy. Blend in bananas and vanilla one minute. Add dry ingredients and blend one minute. Stir in nuts and spread in pan. Bake 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown. Cool and frost with Browned Butter Frosting.

Browned Butter Frosting
½ cup butter
4 cups powdered sugar
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
about 3 tablespoons milk or half and half

Heat butter in saucepan over medium heat past the melting point until it boiling, and a delicate brown. Remove from the heat and immediately add the remaining ingredients. This should be thicker than a glaze and thinner than frosting. Using a spatula smooth over the top of the Monkey Squares immediately. The frosting will be easier to spread once it’s on the warm bread.

The Spin:

No spin, really. I didn’t have any nuts, so I omitted.

I was leery about Browned Butter Frosting, as I haven’t mastered browning butter. I tend to let it go too long. I browned it perfectly {IMHO} this time. The butter had this lovely, nutty, buttery flavor. The butter will separate leaving dark brown bits in the bottom of the pan. I thought I had burned it so I left it in the pan. Thom, being the adventurous taster he is, tasted the dark brown bits and declared his love for them, so I had to try. It was awesome! Into the frosting they went, flecking it with little browned dots of loveliness.