You put the lime in the coconut

I spent a nice Sunday afternoon doing a little baking while watching some open wheel car racing on tv.



I had enough bananas for two loaves, so I figured what the hell and decided to make two. There was a banana bread recipe that I've been meaning to try, so I thought this was a good opportunity to test it out.



I can't remember where I got this from, but I heard somewhere that using frozen bananas in banana bread made it taste better, so I had a few frozen bananas waiting in the freezer. I also had a few that were getting ripe in my fruit bowl. So I made my staple banana bread recipe using ripe, fork-mashed bananas as I normally would for one loaf. The second was a recipe for coconut banana bread with a lime glaze. Now I'm not a huge coconut fan (i.e., I don't like German Chocolate cake, primarily because of the coconut gooeyness), however if used in the right recipe, it's great stuff. The coconut, banana and lime combination appealed to me (perhaps because it made me think of some tropical island I'd want to be vacationing on right now, sipping on a mai tai or some other mini-umbrella worthy cocktail) so I gave this recipe a shot for my second loaf.


I decided to use the frozen bananas for the tropical banana bread recipe. I also put the frozen bananas into the food processor to chop them up a bit, only to find the result to be a semi-pureed texture instead.



So both loaves baked up and after they cooled (which is always the hardest thing to do - waiting!), I gave them a taste test. My usual banana bread tasted the way it always does, very banana-ey and moist, just the way I like it.

Now onto the new recipe. The new recipe kicked some tropical arse! The crunchiness of the flaked coconut on top of the loaf as well as mixed within the batter was delicious and the lime glaze on top just brought all the flavors together and brought a subtle yet delicious tang. I'm not sure whether the frozen bananas were the trick, but I'm going to have to try the pureed frozen bananas in my usual banana bread recipe next time to see if I can detect any difference.