Banana Coconut Bread

I don’t know about you, but I always seem to end up with dozens of frozen black bananas in my freezer. As soon as they start to ripen, they are too ripe for me. I am a picky banana eater and my favorite time is when they are just slightly under-ripe. Weird? Whatever!

Obviously banana bread is the best way to deal with this problem.

This is a recipe I created from splicing/modifying/playing around and I think it is flippin DELICIOUS! Added bonus: it is fairly healthy as well as I am a huge fan of baking with honey and whole wheat flour.

This bread is not overly sweet, yet incredibly moist and keeps well on the counter top.

Yield: 1 9×5 loaf pan

Oven at 350° F for 60-75 min

Ingredients

3/4 C melted coconut oil (or butter, oil, fat of your choice)
3/4 C honey (or brown sugar)
2 ea eggs
1 C mashed banana – usually about three bananas
1 C lite coconut milk (from a can)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1 ea grated orange rind

1 1/4 C whole wheat flour
1 1/4 C all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon

Cream together oil and honey. Next add the eggs, extracts, and orange zest – mixing completely. Skip the orange zest if you are lazy/don’t have an orange.

Whisk together all dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add half of the dry ingredients into your oil/honey/egg mixture. If you skip this step and add them directly into your bowl, I won’t tell. The world probably won’t explode and your banana bread will still come out of the oven SO GOOD.

Pour coconut milk into mixing bowl and mix (you could really use any form of milk you like, or maybe some earl grey tea or coffee…).

Add the rest of your dry ingredients and mix until you have a nice batter.

Spray/oil/butter your loaf pan. I like to shake some seeds into my pan so the bread comes out with a nice seedy crust around the edge. Sesame seeds are delicious with this bread. I used a combination of hemp/chia/sesame/flax that I put on EVERYTHING because I love these little seeds and all the health benefits they sneak in!

Oh yeah! I forgot to put chocolate chips in my ingredients, but it is generally a given that I will add chocolate chips to just about any baked good… Just go ahead and dump an entire bag of your favorite chocolate chips into the bowl – you won’t regret it! Then pour your batter into the loaf pan and voila!