Browned Butter Coconut Bread

Or what I'm now calling The Best Quick Bread I've Ever Made.

I'm not kidding. This stuff is amazing. I'm already dreaming of variations. (I've attempted one, but it's not perfected yet. Once it is, you'll be the first to hear about it. Psst... it involves alcohol. Oh yeah.)

But let's get back to this bread first. This fragrant, sweet, flavorful, addictive bread. And this from a girl who claims not to like coconut. Well, not anymore folks.



One of the best things about this bread — and really, everything about it is fantastic — is the crust. Oh, the crust. I think it's so amazing because of the mixing technique you'll see below. The crust is crunchy and full of vanilla buttery flavored goodness.



The original recipe calls for melted butter. Since I was melting it anyway, I decided to take it a step further and make browned butter instead. If you've never browned butter before, don't worry. It's incredibly simple and transforms butter into something even more magical. The nutty aroma is one of my favorite baking smells. That and vanilla.

Speaking of vanilla, you'll need a vanilla bean for this recipe. I know, they're crazy expensive. Unless, like me, you get them from ebay. Yes, really. I talked about it here. They're probably not the best nor the freshest, but when I can get 1/4 pound for nearly the same price as 4 measly beans from the grocery store, I'm not going to complain!

Let's get to the recipe. ("FINALLY" I can hear you say.)



Browned Butter (and vanilla bean) Coconut Bread
Adapted from Seven Spoons


Ingredients
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, browned and cooled slightly (see notes below)
Seeds scraped from a vanilla bean (hang on to the pod!)

2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups COCONUT milk (I originally wrote this as just regular milk but completely spaced that I'd used coconut milk (canned) - sorry!)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour, plus more for dusting the pan
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
5 ounces flaked coconut* (about 1 1/2 cups)

*I used sweetened. My store didn't have unsweetened. I think you'll be fine using either.

To make browned butter:
Place butter in small sauce pan over medium-low heat. Melt, stirring periodically. Once it's melted, continue stirring. The butter will get foamy - keep stirring. Once the foam goes away, you'll notice that it's gotten very clear with some solids at the bottom. Keep stirring! You don't want those to burn. You want the butter to start to turn a very light brown color and you'll definitely start noticing the amazing, nutty aroma. Let the solids at the bottom turn light brown then remove from heat. Let cool about 5 minutes, then drop the cleaned out vanilla pot into the butter. Do this too soon and you'll have fried vanilla bean — trust me — so wait the 5 minutes. The hot butter will draw the rest of the vanilla goodness from the scraped bean. And, as an added bonus, your house will smell incredible. Best. Air freshener. Ever.
Let this cool about 15 minutes or so.

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Grease and flour a loaf pan.

In a small bowl, combine the eggs, milk, vanilla extract and scraped vanilla seeds (here's a great post from Zoe Francios at zoebakes about vanilla beans and how to use them).

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and sugar. Stir in the coconut with a wooden spoon. Add the egg mixture and stir JUST until combined. You can leave some flour dry because you add the browned butter next.

Remove vanilla bean from butter, then pour over batter. Gently fold in the butter, incorporating all of it but don't over mix - be gentle!
**Here's where I think the magic happens in this recipe. Adding the butter LAST means that it's basically coating the batter, hence the crunchy, flavor-filled crust. At least, that's my theory.**

Scrape batter into prepared loaf pan and bake on the middle rack about 1 hour. The top will be golden brown (as you see in the photos) and a toothpick will come out clean.

Let the bread sit on a cooling rack in the pan about 10 minutes then turn out on to the rack. Let cool a bit more before slicing.

This is wonderful warm, but is equally fantastic at room temperature. It doesn't need a thing to make it any better, but I suppose you could spread some butter or jam over the top. I didn't bother. It was far too good all on its own to cover up with anything else.

Make this. Now!

Banana Cherry Bread — Recipe and Questions

The Recipe

Slightly modified from Alton Brown, I'm Just Here for More Food

Wet Ingredients 1
3 to 4 / 340g / 12oz Overripe Bananas
1 Cup / 210g / 7.5oz Sugar

Wet Ingredients 2
1/2 Cup /4oz Vegetable oil (original called for 1 stick butter, melted and cooled)
2 large / 100g / 3.5 oz Eggs
1 tsp / 6g/ .25oz Vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients
2 cups / 255g / 9oz All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp / 6g / .25oz Baking Soda
1 tsp / 6g / .25oz Salt

Frozen Cherries, approximately 1 - 1-1/2 cups (whatever looks good to you!)



Directions

• Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in center of oven.2. Grease loaf pan.
• Place bananas and sugar in a large mixing bowl and mash them together with a potato masher until smooth (I used my mixer with the beater attachment).
• Combine Wet Ingredients 1 in separate bowl, then add to sugar/banana mixture.
• Combine Dry Ingredients in separate bowl. Add combined Wet Ingredients to Dry mixing until just combined.
• Fold in cherries and pour into prepared pan.
• Bake for 50 min or 1 hour until toothpick comes out more or less clean.
• Cool in pan for 15 minutes then turn out onto a rack. Cool completely before slicing.

The Verdict

Very good! Flavorful and moist and I love having the cherries in there. It's a unexpected but welcome change from regular banana bread. But it could be better.

I have a few questions I wanted to ask you guys what you think.

As you can see from the photo, the edges got over done. I kept checking the loaf and it was never going to hit the temp Alton called for (210°F) and it was still a bit wet on the toothpick, so I let it cook longer. Should I have pulled it out sooner? It cooked for over 1 hour.

Also, I didn't have the full amount of bananas and therefore less volume of wet ingredients. If I'd cut back on the flour would that have helped with the cooking time and doneness issues? Could the batter have been too dense?

I still have problems judging baking times with quick bread and tend to err on the side of over done to avoid a raw center. Any tips you might have would be greatly appreciated!

Spicy Pumpkin Cranberry Walnut Bread

I had half a can of leftover pumpkin puree in the fridge and wanted to use it before it went bad. I looked through the various pumpkin recipes on my computer and flipped through a couple of cookbooks. I asked Dwight if he wanted cookies or bread, and bread it was.

So I went to one of my go-to baking experts—Betty Crocker. The other is Alton Brown. Aww, isn't he just the greatest? I'm going to have to bust out some of the blueberries we picked and froze last year and make some famous Alton Brown blueberry muffins. But I digress.

The recipe called for a whole can of pumpkin, so I halved it. I made a few other mods along the way, as well, like adding way more spices. I love me some spicy pumpkin bread. It turned out wonderfully. It's some of the best pumpkin bread I've ever made. The only change I would make is cutting the sugar a tad because the dried cranberries are very sweet.

Enjoy!

Spicy Pumpkin Cranberry Walnut Bread
Adapted from Betty Crocker

1/3 cup butter flavored Crisco
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup canned pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/3 cup water
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4-1/2 cup dried cranberries (guessing on the amount—I just dumped some in there)
generous 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (ditto on the measurement here—who says baking has to be precise? Not me! And, yeah, those spice measurements up there? Total guess. Dump, dump and dump. That's how I roll.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream shortening and sugar in mixing bowl. Add eggs and beat until well incorporated. Add pumpkin, water and spices. Beat until smooth. In a separate bowl, mix flour, soda, powder and salt. Add to pumpkin mixture and blend on low only until mixture is mostly incorporated. You should still see dry flour. Add nuts and cranberries and finish mixing by hand just until blended through. Do not over mix.

Pour into large, greased bread pan. (The cookbook said to only grease the bottom, but I wasn't taking any chances. I used butter flavored spray on entire inside of pan.)

Bake 60-70 minutes or until toothpick or cake tester comes out clean. Turn out onto cooling rack and cool completely before slicing. It'll be tough to wait, but it's worth it. The flavors aren't as good when it's too hot. You gotta trust me on this.