Coconut, bananas, lime and rum - oh my!

There are many banana bread recipes floating around, but we thought this one we made was just a bit different and quickly turned into one of our favorites after having a couple slices. This Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze has a couple things going for it that make it just a bit more unique.

As with most banana breads, you will want to use the ripest 'naners you can get your hands on - the darker the better, I say, as long as there is no mold growing on them! You can use lightly spotted bananas if you must, but if you let them go a bit longer than you think you should, their flavor and sweetness is just delicious when you bake with them. I always keep my eye out for the bags of "too-ripe to sell" bananas at the market as they usually mark them down to under $.15/lb - it is not so much about the price rather it hastens the wait time! Once they get dark enough, I either freeze them in their skins (they easily squish out when thawed) or mash and freeze them in 1 cupfuls to use later on.

As you can see in the recipe, I used a combination of all-purpose and whole wheat pastry flour. You can use completely all-purpose if you like, but as I'm sure you've noticed, I do this with a lot of recipes to sneak in a little nutrition. In some recipes you could use regular whole wheat flour, but the pastry flour lends a much lighter texture. I've also been using white-whole wheat flour (I typically only keep King Arthur Flour in the pantry, but do occasionally use Bob's Red Mill flour) with good results, but I'm more likely to have the pastry flour on hand.

Okay, I should get back on track so we can talk about the bread! While the base ingredients for this banana bread are pretty similar to others, the unique factor comes into play when you add a handful of sweetened shredded coconut to the mix. The bread also has the alluring addition of dark rum in the batter - I didn't think that you could really taste much of a rum flavor, but we thought it added a rich dimension and gave us that "what makes this so good?" feeling. To tie in with the coconut inside, the batter is showered with a couple more tablespoons of coconut on top.

Once the bread has baked and cooled slightly, the warm bread is drizzled with a must-make glaze made simply from confectioners' sugar and tart fresh lime juice. Some of the glaze is absorbed into the cake, helping keep it moist, while the rest dries into a bright, sweet and soft sugar-y crust. I put a piece of parchment under the cake when I drizzled the loaf to catch any drips that might come off - after I gave Jeff a couple slices of the bread, I caught him red handed with his fingers all over that parchment paper trying to sneak the dribbles of glaze! Busted!

Recipes
Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze