banana bread infused with banana dulce tea blend

Banana “Dulce” Bread Recipe

I’ve steeped several cups of The Persimmon Tree‘s Banana Dulce blend before I realized that I should use these great flavours for something even more delicious. Banana bread to me was an obvious answer. Instead of a typical tea review, I decided to be a bit more creative with this tea’s post. It’s an herbal blend with notes of ripe banana, sweet coconut, graham cracker and a hint of caramel. The recipe below is what I used to make my scrumptious treat that was a hit. Of course, there is always room for improvement so if you give the recipe a try let me know if you made any modifications to it and how it helped. Enjoy!

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/3 cups mashed overripe bananas
The Persimmon Tree‘s Banana Dulce Tea

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan. The recipe will make one loaf. If you’d like you can also make this into banana muffins instead. I have not done that so I’m unsure of how many it’ll make, and depending on the size. Plan for at least one or two dozen.
• In a large bowl, add the flour, baking soda and salt. Before moving onto step 3 please follow the instructions below on how to properly infuse the Banana Dulce tea blend into the mixture.

*Note: The instructions below come from Cupcake Project on the proper way to infuse tea into your baked goods for the full, and best effect possible.

Infusing Tea into Butter Instructions:

    1.    In a small saucepan, melt the butter until just liquid.  
    2.    Add approximately 1.5 teaspoons of The Persimmons Tree’s Banana Dulce tea leaves.
    3.    Continue heating the mixture for about 5 minutes on low heat.
    4.    Remove from the heat and allow to stand for another 5 minutes.
    5.    Pour the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing hard on the tea leaves and then discarding them.  This is the part where you will undoubtedly end up with some butter that you can’t get off of the leaves.  I encourage you to press as hard as you can, but not to obsess about lost butter – it’s for a good cause.
    6.    Let the butter come to room temperature and then use it as you would regular butter in your baked goods.

…Directions (con’t)

• In a separate bowl, blend together the butter and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Afterwards, still the banana mixture into the flour mixture from step 2. Continue to stir just until everything is moisten. If you’d like to add any additional items (nuts, chocolate, etc.) do so right now.
• Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan or muffin tins.
• Bake for 60-65 minutes. Insert a toothpick into the centre of the loaf. When it comes out clean it is finished. Let it cool for about 10 minutes before serving.