UnZen and the Art of Stress Baking: Banana Bread

Banana Bread is meant to save you money and time. You get to use up old bananas and its usually stupid easy and quick to make. This is not that recipe. This recipe is for when you have 5 phone calls to return, what feels like 12 million errands to run and only have the energy to procrastinate and stress pick at your cuticles.  I like making this kind of banana bread because it’s hard to mess up even though there’s a lot going on and just easy enough to rationalize making. My personal advice? Maybe just make this once a month.

  • 1 C Honey

  • 2 T Molasses

  • ½ C Melted Butter

  • ½ C Cashew Butter (feel free to sub in whatever nut butter you have in the pantry)

  • 2 Eggs

  • 1 T Cream of Coconut

  • 1 t Vanilla Extract

  • 3 T Milk

  • 2 C All Purpose Flour

  • ½ t Kosher Salt

  • ½ t Baking Soda

  • 1 t Baking Powder

  • 3 overripe bananas (only have ripe bananas? Peel what you have and freeze them over night, take them out to defrost and the bananas are the super gross looking mush of your dreams!)

  • 1 C + 1/4 C Shredded Coconut

Super Extra Spice Mix:

  • 1 t Espresso Powder

  • 2 t Cocoa Powder

  • 1 T Ground Cinnamon

  • 2 t Cardamom

  • 1 t Nutmeg

  • ½ t Ground Ginger

  • ½ t Coriander

  • ½ t Allspice

Tools you will need:

2 medium size bowls (one has to be microwave safe), 1 small bowl, whisk, spatula, measuring cups, measuring spoons, 1 sheet pan, 1 long pointy object, and one 9x5 loaf pan

 Let’s get to it:

1.       Spread 1 C of the Shredded coconut on the sheet pan, grease the loaf pan.

2.       Preheat the oven to 325F (162C) and place the sheet pan with coconut into the oven until the coconut is golden brown.

3.       Take out the toasted coconut and gently toss in the ¼ C of untoasted coconut.

4.       Melt the butter in a medium sized microwave safe bowl until just melted (about 45 secs). Whisk in the honey, molasses and cashew butter.

5.       Add eggs, vanilla, milk, cream of coconut, and bananas to the mixture. Break up the bananas first with the whisk before blending in the rest of the ingredients.

6.       Mix the super extra spice mix in a small bowl.

7.       Whisk the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together with 1 t of the super extra spice mix in the second medium sized bowl.

8.       Fold the dry ingredients into the wet until there are still streaks of flour in the batter.

9.       Pour half of the almost mixed batter into the second bowl. Split the shredded coconut between the two batters and add the rest of the spice mix to one of the bowls.

10.   Finish mixing each of the batters.

11.   The point of making two colors of batters is to swirl them together. To achieve this, use the spatula to randomly plop about a quarter of the lighter batter into the bottom of the loaf pan, leaving bare spots on the bottom.

12.   Add plops of the darker batter into the bare spots and over lapping in places. Alternate batters over the other until you have used all the batter.

13.   Use a butter knife, cake tester, skewer or other long pointy object to stick into the batter, touching the base of the pan. Make a series of figure 8s once through the unbaked loaf.

14.   Place the loaf pan on the sheet pan from earlier and bake for about 1 hour or until your long pointy object from before comes out clean.

15.   After it cools; feel free to stress eat this over a trash can, dunk some parts into coffee, or show off at work because showing up Karen in accounting is now to only way you can feel joy.

Samantha Davis