PaleOMG’s Coffee Cake Banana Bread

Hi, my name is Emily and I’m a recipe addict.

I have so many cookbooks, recipe cards, Pinterest boards, iPhone apps, screenshots of Instagram posts, etc. that sometimes, it gets a little overwhelming.

some of my favorite cookbooks

But, I really really enjoy cooking and baking. The beautiful thing is, there are so many wonderful recipes out there that I rarely feel the need to create something new. Lucky me! I feel that if someone else has already spent the time and money to think it up, test it over and over, and then write it all up for me, I should just go with that.

For instance, the other day I decided to make PaleOMG’s Coffee Cake Banana Bread because I had some rotting bananas,  her recipes always  intrigue me, and she seems really chill and cool. Don’t you love my recipe decision process?

I made this on a Friday night, so that my Saturday morning would be graceful and easy. I walked down the stairs, sliced a slice (ok, two slices) of some sweet paleo banana sunshine, and smiled as my teeth collected one delicious morsel after another, with slippered feet propped up in utter happiness.

It was awesome.

First, there was the batter. Simple stuff: mash, add, blend. My Kitchenaid mixer, Sally, is one of my best friends. Maybe I should get out more… nah.

am I the only one who loves licking the raw batter?

Whatever doesn’t make it into the pan goes into my mouth. Screw salmonella; nothing comes close to the taste of raw egg batter. I cannot be alone in this, surely.

Then, into the pan it goes! The trickiest part was cutting out the parchment paper and oiling it up. I traced the parchment paper then actually cut it out. I’m not sure if that was really necessary, but it came out wonderfully, so I would probably do the same thing again.

I left the nuts out of the topping because I didn’t have any nuts and…meh. I just wasn’t feeling the nuts that day. No biggie. Also, I used coconut oil for the topping, so it got pretttyyy sticky on my fingers. Alas, chunks were placed. Then, I licked my fingers.

my interpretation of, “Place chunks of the toppings all around the top of the banana bread mixture.”

About 50 minutes later, I had something wonderful come out of the big, warm magic box. I may have eaten a small sliver to make sure it tasted ok. I was shooting for a relaxed Saturday morning, remember?

I took some pretty artsy photos with my Camera+ app of the finished product.

picture 1, top view

oooh, different angle

can’t stop me! photo with adorable crumbs and bites missing!

In all seriousness, it was really delicious, really easy, and really rewarding on a slow Saturday morning. It depends on how you eat this bread. I like to start from the bottom and work my way up, so I first eat the bread-y, banana-y part, then end up with mouthful after mouthful of the sweet coffee-cake-like topping. It’s been a while since I’ve had any true grain breads, but honestly this tastes so much like the banana bread I grew up eating. The combo of banana bread with coffee cake takes almost-rotten bananas to celebrity status in 50 minutes flat. I think I might buy some more bananas tomorrow so they will be all soft by this Friday and do the same thing all over again. Maybe I’ll go crazy and add nuts this time.

Often, I will get stuck on a recipe I really like that is easy, cheap, and delicious, so I could see this one being made for weekends in a row until I’m ready to move on.

Thank you, PaleOMG! Keep up the good work (and keep the recipes coming!)