Coconut Flour Banana Bread

Be sure to read the updates below!

I haven't been baking much lately, having been too busy with this thing called "life".  So today I found myself with 1/2 dozen ripe bananas, and an urge to make it into banana bread or muffins.  Since I am trying to avoid wheat as much as possible, I perused the web for recipes that used coconut flour.  There are several out there that combine various flours but only a few that used strictly coconut flour.  To be honest, none of them appealed to me, so I did my usual of "a little from this one, a little from that one, a little from experience" to see what I would get.

Now one thing about coconut flour is that it is very dry.  It also has no gluten.  So that means more moisture added and to expect less of a rise that you would get from wheat flours.  We'll see if my memory holds true!

Here is what I did:

I took 2 cups of coconut flour and added a cup of kefir I needed to use to give it some moisture.  The coconut flour sucked that up and asked for more! LOL.  But I left it at that amount.  I let that sit for an hour while I watched the end of the baseball game and then got the remaining stuff together.

I mashed the bananas (6, remember?) with a fork until they were nice and creamy.  Call me old fashioned but I like to do this step by hand.  I can find and squish any chunks that try to hide this way.  Then I got out the hand mixer.  To the bananas I added 1/2 cup pure maple syrup, mix, 4 eggs, mix, 2 teaspoons vanilla, mix, and 3/4 cup flaxseed meal and mixed some more.

I then added the coconut flour and mixed it all very well.  Quite frankly, I'm concerned there is too much batter for my loaf pan.  Oh well, wouldn't be the first kitchen disaster I've ever had.

Speaking of the loaf pan, you need to either line it with parchment paper or grease it very, very well.  I was out of parchment paper, so I greased it well with coconut oil.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

So the recipe looks like this:
2 cups Coconut Flour
1 cup Kefir
6 Ripe Bananas
1/2 Cup Maple Syrup
4 eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla
3/4 cup Flaxseed Meal.

Summary instructions:

Mix the kefir and coconut flour together and set aside.

Mash the bananas (or use your mixer) until all squished.  Add remaining ingredients one at a time, mixing after each addition.

Pour into a 9X5 loaf pan that's either been well greased or lined with parchment paper.

Bake @ 325*F for 60 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

This is how it looked from the oven:

Let cool in pan for 15 -20 minutes. (I let it cool for about 15 minutes and should have given it a little longer)

After turning out onto rack:

As you can see from the crack running down the side I should have let it cool a bit more before removing it from the pan.  Another thing with coconut flour is the products lose moisture and firm up as they cool.  So a little longer in the pan would probably would have avoided that crack.  If you look at the rear right, you can also see where a small corner of the loaf fell off while putting it on the rack.  It was delicious!  :-)

Gluten free, Grain Free Banana Bread is possible!

Update:

Some 3 hours later and I decided it had cooled enough to try a slice.  The good news is it is nice and moist, the way I like my Banana Bread.  The bad news it is sweet.  Too sweet!  And I am a guy who likes sweet things!

I think next time I will cut the maple syrup to 1/4 cup and add 1/4 cup water or milk.