Some blogkeeping- there is still one more day to enter the Cleveland Marathon race entry giveaway!

My friend Cuoghi is allergic to coconut. Can you imagine being allergic to coconut? I LOVE it so much and cant imagine not being able to experience all the gloriousness that is coconut. Coconut flakes. Special K cookies. Almond Joys. Coconut ice cream. Coconut oil. Fresh coconut right from the tree!

You get the picture. BUT up until recently I had never tried coconut flour. It intrigued me but I was intimidated. I knew you couldn’t use it as a replacement for traditional flour in a 1:1 ratio, but was really eager to try it out. Thank goodness the first recipe I tried came out GREAT. Here is a recipe for peanut butter coconut flour banana bread. The texture of this bread reminds me of bread pudding or pastel de elote – it’s really moist (Favorite word!) and not really quick-bread like but still so so so good. I’ll definitely be making this again!

Peanut Butter Coconut Flour Banana Bread

modified from Ambitious Kitchen’s paleo banana bread recipe. This is not paleo-sorry;)

Here’s what you need:

• 3-4 medium ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup natural peanut butter*
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup coconut flour*
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup peanut butter chips

Here’s what you do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a small bowl, combine coconut flour, baking soda and baking powder. Set aside.
3. Combine bananas, sugar, vanilla and peanut butter with an electric mixer and mix until smooth. Add in eggs and mix until combined.
4. Add in coconut flour mixture; mix until just combined – do not over mix.
5. Pour batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle peanut butter chips on top.
6. Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into middle of pan comes out clean.
7. Cool completely before cutting. Texture will be somewhat mushy – not undercooked but more like a bread-pudding texture. Enjoy!

*Disclosure: I was not compensated for this post, but some of the product (nut butter, coconut flour) was provided to me by Swanson Health. My views and comments are solely my own and do not represent those of Swanson.

Some questions for you:

• Now that I have all this coconut flour – what should I make with it?
• Do you like coconut?