Banana Love: Banana Coconut French Toast

Banana-stuffed Coconut-crusted French Toast with Chocolate Sauce

Guilty pleasures … we all have them. One of mine is Steven and Chris: a weekday tv show on CBC. Whenever I get the chance to steal an hour in the afternoon, I like to put my feet up and watch Steven Sabados and Chris Hyndman and their guests as they cover the latest in design, health, beauty, relationships, entertaining and, of course, cooking. It’s a light, fun show and I always learn something new. On one show a while back, their guest Chef Voula presented some recipes for weekend cooking and, because of my boundless love of bananas, I had to try making banana-stuffed French toast. It was so good I made it two weekends in a row. 

Here’s my version of Banana-Stuffed Coconut-Crusted French Toast with Chocolate Sauce. FYI - This is not the time to use those ugly, slightly squishy bananas in the freezer. Use them instead for Sweet-topped Banana Muffins or Good Ol' Banana Bread. For this delicious treat, use ripe bananas that are still nice and firm.

MA’s Banana-stuffed Coconut-crusted French Toast

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Lightly oil or butter a baking sheet.

1 loaf French bread, unsliced

3 bananas

1 – 398 ml tin coconut milk, well shaken, separated into ½ cup and 1 ¼ cup

5 eggs

½ tsp vanilla

1 ½ cups milk

2 cups desiccated, shredded or flaked coconut

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Banana slices stuffed into bread pocket

Cut bread into six slices, each about 1” thick. With a sharp knife, cut a slit into the middle of each slice to make a pocket.

Peel and slice bananas into rounds, each about ½ “ thick. Divide into six portions. Stuff the bananas into the bread pockets. Gently press down on filled bread. Place stuffed slices onto a large baking dish (use two dishes, if you need more room).

In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, ½ cup of coconut milk, milk and vanilla. Pour mixture over stuffed slices, covering bread evenly. Let soak for 10 minutes, turn slices over gently and let soak for another 5 minutes.

Cover soaked slices with coconut

Spread coconut onto a large plate. One at a time, gently place slices into coconut, turning to coat each side evenly. 

Ready for the oven

Place each slice on prepared baking sheet.

Bake for 15 minutes, then turn each piece over, and bake for another 15 minutes or until nicely golden.

Chocolate and coconut milk for the sauce

Chocolate Sauce: In the top of a double boiler or in a bowl fitted over a sauce pan, put the chocolate chips and the 1¼ cup coconut milk. Warm over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate melts and combines with the milk. The sauce will be smooth and shiny. 

Note: If you don’t use all the sauce on the French toast, put it in the fridge and melt it down to use it later. Keeps about a week.

Serve warm stuffed French toast topped with chocolate sauce. Garnish with more sliced bananas. Enjoy!

Makes six servings.

Printable Recipe for MA's Banana-stuffed Coconut-crusted French Toast

Banana Love: Sweet Top Banana Muffins

Sweet banana muffins

Time for another instalment of Banana Love.

There are a lot of banana muffin recipes out there. This is the one when you want something on the sweet side to enjoy with your afternoon cuppa. The sweet top is a streusel: brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, butter. Start mashing up those ripe bananas now and you could be indulging in these sweet delights within the hour. Gotta love bananas.

MA’s Sweet Top Banana Muffins

Muffin ingredients

Preheat oven to 375º F.

1 ½ cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

3 large ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 cup)

¾ cup sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/3 cup melted butter

1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

1 tbsp flour

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp cold butter

Sprinkle on the sweet stuff

In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients.

In another bowl, mix together the bananas, sugar, egg and butter.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing until just moistened.

Fill each muffin cup about ¾ full.

In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, flour and cinnamon.

Cut in butter to get a crumb consistency.

Sprinkle topping over the muffins.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until tester inserted into centre of muffin comes out clean.

Cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then remove to rack to continue cooling.

Makes 12 muffins.

Printable Recipe for MA's Sweet Top Banana Muffins

Banana Love: Good Ol' Banana Bread

Fragrant and Delicious: My Go To Banana Bread

You know I love bananas (see my previous posts for Blender Banana Layer Cake and Earthquake Banana Cream Pie). I also love sharing, and this recipe makes enough banana bread to share with your favourite people.

I’ve adapted this recipe a little over the years, but the basics come from one of the first cookbooks I bought myself as a young bride in the early 70s. The cookbook is Mmmmm: A Feastiary by Ruth Reichl.

A much loved cookbook

The book’s been like a friend to me. I still turn to it for inspiration, re-reading the recipes and the stories and enjoying the original sketches (where else can you see a corn cob playing apple notes on a peapod flute?) and sweet, offbeat photographs like the life-size quilted chicken adorning the chicken fricassee recipe. While our friendship is strong, Mmmmm’s pages are now fragile: edges yellowed, a little tattered, a little torn, some splattered with sauce and a growing number of them permanently adrift from their paperback mooring. Don’t worry, old friend, I will hold you together until destiny us do part.

You might wonder why I never replaced this beloved cookbook of mine. Well, I got to wondering that, too. After all, I’ve replaced my Joy of Cooking several times. So I googled Ruth Reichl this morning and found out that she’d gone on to great things in the world of food: writing, editing, lecturing and winning awards (you can read the details and get a few recipes at ruthreichl.com.) FYI - if you check out Mmmmm on Amazon, there are currently two new copies available starting at $558 and a handful of used copies from $35 and up.

Now, one more thing before we head for the kitchen … in Ms Reichl’s original intro to the recipe she writes “I like to bake the bread in a lot of old coffee cans so that it seems like more.” If you try baking the bread in a variety of containers, butter them up really well first and fill each about 2/3 with batter. And remember to share some slices with a friend.

MA’s Go To Banana Bread

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Grease pans.

Getting dry ingredients ready

2 ½ cups flour

2 cups sugar (use all white or 1 ½ cup white and ½ cup brown)

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

½ tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup butter

4 bananas, ugly ripe

4 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and spices.

For the blender: ugly bananas and all

In a blender, place butter, bananas, eggs and vanilla. Mix until well blended.

Add wet ingredients to the dry and stir with love until well blended.

Ready to bake

Pour into prepared pans. Makes 6 cups of batter, which is enough for two 6”x 3 ½” loaf pans and one 9” x 13” loaf pan.

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes. Test for doneness with cake tester or wooden skewer.

Remove from pans and cool on rack.

Keeps well in refrigerator for several days or you can wrap and freeze for future enjoyment.

Printable Recipe for MA's Go To Banana Bread

Banana Love: Earthquake Banana Cream Pie

Earthquake Banana Cream Pie

My love affair with bananas continues in this very excellent banana cream pie.

I found the basis for this recipe online six or seven years ago. The recipe's contributor noted that their father had made this pie from scratch in his restaurant for over forty years and the pie was always a favorite. Unfortunately, I don't know more about the restaurant and can't pass on the credit. I’ve rewritten the recipe here with minor changes and when you taste it, you'll see why it was such a favorite.

To start, you’ll need a baked pie shell. You can make one using my flaky lardy piecrust recipe or whatever piecrust you like as long as it’s already baked and cooled before the filling goes in. By the way, don’t worry if your homemade crust has a few uneven edges as mine does in the photo below. Whipped cream at serving time is the perfect cover up. The pre-formed graham crust you can buy at the grocery store is also delicious in this recipe. If you use a crust that is less than 10 inches in diameter, you will have leftover filling. Put it into ramekins and enjoy a tasty little pudding dessert.

You can use whatever milk you like to make the filling. I use skim and it works just fine. However, this is one place where you will not want to use overripe bananas. Save the mushy bananas for another recipe (like blender banana cake) and use slices of the firm ones here. Because of the custard filling and the bananas, this pie is not a good keeper. Plan to have it eaten within a day or two of making it otherwise the moisture of the custard will soften the crust. 

And what about the earthquake? Occasionally, the custard filling doesn’t set as firmly as you would like. The pie will still look smooth and firm until you cut the first slice - then suddenly cracks form along the top (you can see it in the photo at the top of this post). This happened as I was serving a slice to my friend Harry. He looked at the cracks and dubbed it earthquake pie. If I'd had an extra banana, I might have covered the top of the pie with banana slices to disguise the earthquake effect. Two pieces of pie later, the seismic custard proved the old adage: it's what's inside that counts!

MA’s Earthquake Banana Cream Pie

Ingredients for filling

10” baked pie shell, cooled

4 cups cold milk

8 tbsp cornstarch

1 ¼ cups sugar

1 pinch salt

4 eggs, slightly beaten

2 tbsp butter

2 tsp vanilla

2 bananas, sliced

In a medium-sized saucepan, pour cold milk.

Mix together cornstarch, sugar and salt. Add the mixture to the cold milk, stirring until all the dry ingredients are dissolved in the milk.

Cook mixture over medium heat. Stir constantly until bubbly.

Cooking the custard

Pour ¼ of the hot mixture into beaten eggs and mix thoroughly. Return egg/milk mixture to saucepan.

Continue cooking until the mixture comes back to bubbling and is thick.

MA’s Tip: If you see little brown flecks floating up, the milk and sugar have begun to scorch. Don’t panic. Try not to stir right down to the bottom of the saucepan. Turn down the heat and/or remove the saucepan for a minute or two.

Blend butter and vanilla into mixture.

Banana slices form centre layer

Pour about half the mixture into the pie shell and cover with banana slices.

Pour remaining mixture on top of the banana slices. Any leftover pie filling can be put into custard cups and served as a dessert.

Let the filling cool, then refrigerate until firm.

Top with sweetened whipped cream and serve.

If you won’t be serving the whole pie at one sitting, I recommend adding the whipped cream to each individual slice as it is served.

Printable Recipe for MA's Earthquake Banana Cream Pie

Ready for the whipped cream

Banana Love: Blender Banana Layer Cake with Mocha Butter Icing

Two dense, moist layers with a more-chocolate-than-coffee butter icing

Banana. Even saying it brings comfort. BA NA NA

And no wonder. For most of us it's one of the first foods our moms mashed up and spoon-fed us. It appears on the original fast food list. It smells wonderful when baked into muffins, breads and cakes. It's best friends with chocolate, plays well with cream cheese and peanut butter, and you can't make a banana split without it.

The banana has just one little shortcoming. It can go from beautiful bright yellow to spotty brown to mushy black in a few short days. Or is this only a problem in my fruit bowl?

Luckily, there are a myriad of ways to use those less than yellow bananas. For this recipe, be sure to choose bananas that are ripe. A few brown spots are okay, but if your bananas are too mushy, they won't work as well here. Fear not, more banana recipes will follow to use up these unfortunates.

I found this recipe in an old cookbook by one of my favourite chefs, Madame Jehane Benoit. Mme Benoit was an icon in Canadian cooking for many years. In the cookbook, Madame Benoit Cooks at Home, she shares some recipes from her daughter Monique including one for Blender Banana Cake. This is my version of it. If you don't care for the Mocha Butter Icing, cream cheese frosting is equally delicious.

Oh, yeah, you'll need a blender to make this.

Blender Banana Layer Cake 

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Butter two 9” round layer cake pans.

2 ½ cups flour

1 ¼ tsp baking powder

1 ¼ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

3 ripe bananas (about 1 ½ cups), sliced

3 large eggs

2/3 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup buttermilk or soured milk*

1 2/3 cups sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Put flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a mixing bowl.

Put all the remaining ingredients into the blender. Cover and blend until smooth.

Pour blender mixture over dry ingredients and stir until well mixed.

Fill each pan about half full.

Divide batter into cake pans.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes.

Cool pans on a wire rack.

Test each cake for doneness. Your tester will come out clean when cake is done. 

When cool, assemble and frost. The frosted cake will keep well in the refrigerator for several days. You can also freeze the unfrosted cakes to frost later.

* Soured milk is what to make when you don’t have buttermilk for a recipe. Basically, you take regular milk and add vinegar to it to make it curdle. In this recipe, I used slightly less than 2/3 cup of 1% milk and added about 2 tablespoons of vinegar to it. Voila, soured milk.


Printable Recipe for MA's Blender Banana Cake

Mocha Butter Icing

Icing ingredients with icing sugar divided into two quantities. Yes, that's a sifter in the lower right-hand corner. Sifting is an old-school technique that's worth it when you want a creamy, smooth icing.

½ cup butter, softened

3 cups sifted icing sugar, divided into 2 cups and 1 cup

1/3 cup sifted cocoa

2 tsp vanilla

1 tbsp cream or milk

2 tbsp brewed coffee, the stronger the better

MA’s Tip: Sifting the icing sugar and the cocoa is recommended for a smooth and creamy icing. You can mix this whole recipe up in a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer if you are lucky enough to have one, but a hand mixer will work well, too.

Mix together cream/milk and brewed coffee and set aside.

Cream butter with 2 cups of icing sugar and cocoa.

Add vanilla and 1 cup of icing sugar to creamed mixture.

Gradually add cream/milk and coffee mixture until icing is smooth and has reached spreading consistency.

This recipe makes enough icing to fill and frost a two-layer cake or a 13” x 9” sheet cake.

Printable Recipe for MA's Mocha Butter Icing

Care to share a bite?