Banana bread is a great excuse to let a few bananas sit on the shelf a little bit longer than you would think is a good idea. Banana bread is strangely the best when the bananas are almost entirely brown and soft. My theory is that the bananas start fermenting in the skins (they smell like alcohol) and the flavor becomes more concentrated. This time I decided to try something different and add coconut to the batter. I looked at a few recipes and a lot of them only use coconut extract for the flavoring. I thought it would be nice to use real coconut milk in the batter so I threw that in. I don’t really care for coconut flakes but in most coconut banana bread recipes they are toasted and sprinkled on top of the batter. I decided to go without the flakes and use the coconut milk instead. I’m glad I went with that instead as the banana bread was soft with a nice afterthought of coconut flavor.
Coconut Banana Bread
(makes 1 loaf)
Printable Version
Ingredients:
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup coconut milk
- 1 tsp coconut extract
- 3 ripe bananas, mashed
- ½ cup toasted coconut flakes (optional)
Directions:
- Place flour, salt and baking soda into a medium bowl and whisk to combine the ingredients.
- In a large bowl, add sugar, oil, eggs, coconut milk and coconut extract. Whisk to combine.
- Add bananas and stir to combine.
- Gradually add flour mixture to wet ingredients
- Pour batter into a greased loaf pan.
- Bake for 65 minutes in a preheated 350F oven.
- Let cool for 10 minutes.