Secret Recipe Club--Banana Coconut Bread

It's time for a Secret Recipe Club recipe again. This month I had Cookaholic Wife who has a ton of lovely Valentine's recipes up right now (unlike someone else we know) who a) forgot about the super bowl and b) keeps forgetting to make something amazing and heart-shaped. Alas. We'll have to let Cookaholic Wife do it for us. In searching for the perfect recipe, I made a delicious barley soup, annd I was going to post it. But then I made her banana coconut bread and decided to kill you with sweetness. Except that it's actually kind of healthy too--so now you can have your cake and eat it too. Mostly though I was just intrigued by the combination of flavors--banana, coconut, and chocolate. Perfect. You could doll it up with a glaze and a dusting of coconut if you want, but we just ate it deliciously as it was for breakfast.

Banana Coconut Bread
adapted from Cookaholic Wife
Makes 2 loaves
Prep time:
Cook time:
Cost: $4.25
sugar: .20, coconut oil: .50, eggs: .20, bananas: .50, buttermilk: .15, flour: .70, chocolate chips: 1.80, coconut: .20

1 C sugar
1/2 C coconut oil (I used extra virgin as should you if you want it to taste and smell coconut-y)
2 eggs
4 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 C buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 C whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 C chocolate chips (let's be real; I totally used more than that--probably a whole bag)
3/4 C sweetened shredded coconut

Preheat oven to 350. Grease two loaf pans.

In a large bowl, combine the sugar and coconut oil. [Note: Coconut oil is liquid over 72 degrees and solid under that. So, if your oil is warmish, mixing will be easy--you'll just mix. If it's not, you can either warm it, or combine it by cutting it into the sugar with a pastry cutter like you would cut butter into a pie crust]. Stir in eggs, then bananas, buttermilk, and vanilla.

To this add your dry ingredients. Don't overmix them (meaning--mix until they're just combined with the wet ingredients and then stop mixing).

Add chocolate chips and coconut (again just mix until combined).

Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then turn it out to cool the rest of the way (if you don't do this it might get stuck in your pan).

We ate ours the next day for breakfast and it was fantastic.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

An InLinkz Link-up

Local in Evansville: Chocolate Deals

Happy Day Evansvillians!

Today when I went to Schnucks for a quick run, I um, accidentally found myself in the chocolate aisle. It was a happy "accident" since they had a ton of really good chocolate on clearance. 

Naturally I sold my soul and stocked up. I don't know if it's on clearance at all locations, but at the Schnucks on Green River, south of Lynch, it's a steal. This is especially fantastic nine days before Valentine's Day when chocolate tends to skyrocket. Here's what I got (only, um, I got more than one of each item). 

-6 full sized Heath bars (8.4 oz): $1.00 
-Butterfinger (huge bar thing 4.4 oz): $.8, 
-Godiva minis (4.4 oz bag): $2.00 
-Green and Blacks (organic 3.5 oz): 2.00 
-Chocolove (3.2 oz): $1.00 
-Culinaria (2.15 oz) (which I've never tried before, but figured what the heck) $1.00 except the Butter Cake one, which was $.50 (whaaat?), 
-Dagoba (2 oz): 1.00 

They also had Godiva bars on sale 2 for $5 and the bags of Godiva squares (I think; or maybe Lindt) 2 for $7 (?). But I didn't buy any of those because the other things were such a fantastic deal. 

I got about a jillion of them, which I plan to freeze (not eat right away; pinky promise) and make into a little Valentine's baggy for Kip. These bars are usually $3-4 each.

Love you guys! Happy Valentine's Day from me. 

Photo Re-Do: Lime Coconut Cake

Find the recipe here. 

This week I'm doing a tiny little sugar fast until Friday. I usually disapprove of such craziness. In fact, generally I'm sort of a moderation snob if I'm any kind of a snob at all. But ever since Christmas, the sugar in this house has been out of control. Usually I consider that a problem my kids have, but lately I've gone from my bit of dark chocolate after dinner to two large pieces of chocolate after dinner, oh and maybe a brownie after lunch, and a few bites throughout the day, and let's not forget that lick of Nutella off the spoon. It kind of adds up and I was starting to crave sugar, which seems like a bad sign. So I thought to myself, "I'm just going to take a breather until I go to my friend's baby shower on Friday."

Taking a breather has been embarrassingly hard. I've got to say if you can't do a tiny little sugar fast, you've probably got a tiny little sugar problem. Hopefully, a few days of abstinence will nip it in the bud and I can go back to my slice of dark chocolate at night. But let me tell you this post didn't help.

Oh, sure, it needed doing. Last week when I made these Coconut Lime Cupcakes for my friend's birthday, I looked up the recipe and saw my sad little pictures for this fantastic bit of cake. That just didn't seem right. So I took new, prettier pictures in an effort to do them justice. And now I'm blerging and drooling all over the keyboard. Oh dear.

You can leave them plain like this. They're perfectly delicious.

But to doll them up for my friend, I mixed up a bit of lime zest and a bit of coconut. It was pretty and delicious.