I know I’ve been cooking a lot with coconut lately, but it’s just so darn delicious! Not to mention versatile; there’s coconut milk, water, cream, essence and oil, you can buy it shredded, dessicated, shaved or whole, and you can eat it fresh, toast it, stir it into batter or sprinkle it atop any cake or slice for a magical, sweet crunch. Oh and it’s not that bad for you either! This Coconut and Banana Bread recipe is moist, dense, moreish, and just generally scrumptious. The crunchy topping I made provided a perfect contrast to the very soft bread, and made the whole thing even harder to resist.My big brother completed an Iron Man 70.3 in Ballarat on the weekend (it’s only a half Iron Man, don’t be too impressed by the 1.9 km swim, 90 km bike ride and 21 km run). So my role as dutiful sister and number one fan was to cook something for the 16 hour return drive that would be healthy, packed with protein and fibre, and most importantly…yummy. We made a quick stopover in Keith so that I could photograph the loaf before we demolished it. We also had a quick session on the exhilarating roller coaster in the local park to release our pent-up energy, before hitting the road again. But for some reason we didn’t find the ride as scary as we did 12 years ago?
Make sure you use the most deformed, blackened, squishy, smelly bananas you can find (as long as they don’t have small organisms growing on them), and I guarantee you’ll be scoffing this down for breakfast, and morning tea, and afternoon tea.
Coconut and Banana Bread
Preparation Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Recipe altered from Taste
INGREDIENTS
Coconut and Banana Bread
- 200 g plain flour
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 200 g dark brown sugar
- 80 g desiccated coconut (or shredded coconut)
- 300 g very ripe mashed banana (4 medium or 3 large bananas)
- 2 eggs
- 270 mL can light coconut cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Crunchy Topping
- 2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
- 2 tablespoons rolled oats
- 3 tablespoons shredded coconut
- 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
- 60 g melted coconut oil or unsalted butter
METHOD
- Preheat oven to 170°C/150°C fan-forced. Grease a 20 x 13 cm (thereabouts) loaf tin and line with baking paper.
- In a medium mixing bowl, sift flour, bicarbonate soda, baking powder and cinnamon, and stir in brown sugar and coconut.
- In a separate medium mixing bowl, use a fork to mash the bananas until there are no large lumps. Add the two eggs and break up their yolks with the fork.
- To the banana and eggs, add the coconut cream and vanilla. Hand-whisk the mixture to combine.
- Gently fold the wet mixture into the dry mixture with a large spatula until the dry ingredients are completely incorporated.
- Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, and sprinkle the pumpkin seeds, oats, shredded coconut, cinnamon and brown sugar evenly over the surface of the mixture. Drizzle the oil or melted butter over the top.
- Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, checking the loaf at the 1 hour mark with with a metal skewer. The skewer should come out clean but with a little moisture on it, as you don’t want to dry out the loaf.
- Once partially cooled, lift the loaf from the pan and slice with a serrated knife. Serve warm with butter and a cup of tea!
- Do an Iron Man.
Store the Coconut and Banana Bread in an airtight container for up to 5 days, or freeze in slices for up to 6 weeks.
one perfect mess 