Caribbean Key-Lime & Banana Bread

November 11, 2012

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This was such a great weekend! An overnight trip to my favorite beach, complete with the perfect sunset, a lovely dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and a stop on the way home at the Italian Market! Saturday was filled with lots of relaxing, a nice home cooked dinner and a movie with my sweet husband. We finished the weekend with a trip to Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival! It was awesome!! Lots of time with my two favorite guys!

But….all good things must come to an end and the Sunday night blues start to set in while I get ready for the week. As I was making my list of what I need to grab at the grocery store on Monday, I stumbled across 3 lone bananas that either needed to be tossed or baked. I grabbed a few of my cookbooks and came across this little gem in Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. I have motified the recipe here a little bit. Their recipe calls for limes instead of key-limes and does not use nutmeg. Regardless, anything from the Caribbean is fabulous to me! I figured it might ease me into my Monday morning!

Batter Ingredients:

3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup mashed banana (about 3)
3 tbsp milk (or plain yogurt)
1 tbsp fresh key-lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
3/4 cup unsweetened grated coconut toasted
2 cups unbleached white flour
1 tsp baking powder

Glaze Ingredients:

1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp rum
3 tbsp fresh key-lime
fresh grated nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 300. Spread the 1 cup of the coconut onto a cookie sheet or pan, and toast it until golden brown. 8-10 minutes.

Adjust oven heat to 350 and butter a 9×5 loaf pan.

To make the batter, in a large mixing bowl, cream the sugar and butter. Stir in the eggs, bananas, milk or yogurt, and key-lime juice. Add the salt, ginger, and grated toasted coconut and mix well.

Sift the flour and baking powder in a separate bowl several times. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and mix until smooth

Pour the batter into the buttered loaf pan

Bake for 1 hour or until an inserted knife comes out clean

Cool the bread for 10 minutes before removing it from the pan. In the meantime, prepare the glaze by adding all of the ingredients to a saucepan and simmer over a low heat, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes. The glaze should thicken slightly. Pour the glaze over the loaf, spreading it with a spatula over the sides and top.