Last month I was contacted and asked to create a recipe using coconut flour. Seeing as how I’ve been meaning to give coconut flour a shot, for my gluten-free flour choice, I decided to give it a try! You can find more info on coconut flour on their site here.
For this recipe, after some thought I decided to use a banana bread as the foundation. I’ve heard that coconut flour is a little more dry than normal flour but still very good. But then, most gluten-free flour seems to have that problem too. I wonder if it’ll turn out the same way.
Banana-Walnut Bread
As I’ve been saying in previous baking posts, moving has been really hard. I can’t seem to find everything I need between leaving some pans for my mom, coincidentally the loaf pan so I was stuck with this square one. Still, bread is bread and with a little lower baking time, it worked out pretty well. Before I say anything else, here’s the recipe I used, adapted from the Pumpkin Bread recipe in the Betty Crocker Christmas Cookbook. It’s not Christmas but its my go-to bread recipe.
Banana- Walnut Bread
Makes 24 slices (in a loaf pan)
3 mashed bananas
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
3 cups coconut flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup coarsely chopped nuts
1. Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 350F. Grease bottoms only of pan with shortening or cooking spray.
2. In large bowl, stir banana, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs until well mixed. Stir in remaining ingredients except nuts. Stir in nuts.
3. Bake 8 inch loaves 50 to 60 minutes, 9 inch loaf 1 hour 10 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans on wire rack.
4. Loosen sides of loaves from pans; remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely about 2 hours, before slicing.
For once, the recipe up there, ingredients is exactly the portion I used. I had to guesstimate a bit of the portions as I couldn’t find my measuring cups but it worked out okay. It definitely was a little dry and crumbly but the taste was very good. I’d have to agree that with a little practice in finding the right level of moistness to the recipes and some research, coconut flour could be a really good alternative for a gluten-free diet/baked good.
This banana bread was pretty good. I think it was a good idea to decrease the sugar since bananas already have quite a bit of it. The walnut pieces gives it some chewy texture and it smelled delectable. Think banana and coconut filling the house. I’m serious, its a pretty good choice. I’ve been searching a long time for a good gluten-free flour. Cloud Nine with a rice and buckwheat base was a good mix but unfortunately thats not available at Costco anymore (or anywhere I frequent). The Robin Hood GF flour has a beet base and it tastes really bad. Blame that one for why I haven’t been baking a lot. Now, coconut flour smells really good without being in the recipe and if it holds all those nutritious values like on the site, I’m down for giving it a shot.
Do you eat gluten-free foods? Have you tried out coconut flour as a substitute for all-purpose/wheat flour?
Tranquil Dreams 