Tropical Banana Bread

A slice of delicious and moist banana bread

I'm not a morning person. It's hard for me to wake up, even harder for me to get out of my bed and start my morning routine, let alone getting out of the door. So every morning, I'm always rushing. Moreover, I never seem to be able to meet my target departure time (unfortunately...). Breakfast for me, therefore, is usually consumed in my car, while I'm driving to work.

Over the years, I tried many store bought options, and rotated through the freezer isles and toast isles. These days, being more health conscious, I try to make my own breakfast. Afterall, it's much cheaper (cost-wise) and I have greater control of what goes in there. Moreover, especially for the sweet morning treats, I can CUT SUGAR!

I finally finished all my oatmeal muffin experimental items from my Take 1, Take 2, and not-yet-fine-tuned Take 3 experiments. Gosh! That was a lot of oatmeal muffins to go through. (Side note: I store the muffin in freezer and just microwave one every morning) I think I'll take a break from that for a little bit before re-tackling it and work to get the perfect recipe. In the mean time, I need to prepare for the upcoming week, and start looking for new breakfast ideas. In comes this Tropical Banana Bread, that uses a lot of my current pantry items (which is always a good news). =D

With just 2 mixing bowls and a spatula, I whipped up the batter and soon my apartment starts smelling really really nice! As usual, I cut sugar (major major major cut, more than the normal amount this time), I only allowed 1/4 of the original recipe amount. The recipe calls for very ripe banana and canned pineapple, both very sweet in nature, so I rationalized that I can most likely be able to do away with minimal sugar and keep things healthy. The result was excellent, a moist banana bread with just the right amount of sweetness, balanced by pineapples' tropical flavor. =D

Finally, though I referenced some recipes as a baseline for this bread, I've changed so much of it, I think I can probably just claim it at this point.

Tropical Banana Bread
Yield: 2 9x5 inch loaves or 4 5x3 inch loaves

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups mashed very ripe banana (about 6 medium sized banana)
• 1 cup can crushed pineapple (liquid drained, or just partially drained if desire a sweeter bread)*
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup flaked coconut (unsweetened)
• 1 cup dried cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line loaf pans with parchment paper.
   
2. Spread walnut on a baking sheet, toast walnut for 3-5 min. Remove from oven and cool.
   
3. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking soda, coconut, sugar, and cinnamon. Whisk to evenly distribute. set aside.
   
4. In another large bowl, combine eggs, oil, vanilla, and banana with a spatula until well mixed. Once combined, stir in pineapple. Slowly fold in dry ingredient (by batches) until just blended.
   
5. Mix in walnut and cranberries in the end. Divide the batter among pans.
   
6. Bake at 350F for about 60 min (9 x 5 loaves) or 45 min (5 x 3 loaves), or until a tooth pick inserted into the center of a loaf comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 min, then unmold to cool completely.

Note:

• Originally, I only used 1/2 cup of sugar. To me, it's still sweet enough, and perfect for breakfast. However, I was told it'd be considered way too drastic of a sugar ration, so I decided to modify the recipe to include 1 cup of sugar instead.  
• The measurement was performed by draining the pineapple juice out of the can, then pack the pineapple into a measuring cup.
  Alternatively, if you only have pineapple slices or pineapple chunks on hand, like me, you can chop it up yourself. Make sure the measured 1-cup does not contain too much can liquid (unless you want your banana bread to be sweeter)
  
• Many recipe likes to call for greasing your baking pans. However, I prefer just lining them with parchment paper, and there is no need for additional greasing/spraying with oil. Since parchment paper is non-stick anyways, they make un-molding 10x easier.
  
• Toasting the walnut prior to use for recipe will bring out the nutty flavor, and thus heightens the aroma and flavor of this bread.
• Trader Joe's sells this amazing cookie butter, and it complements this banana bread perfectly.