Banana Bread Coffee Cake (w/ and w/o Chocolate) Gluten Free and Paleo

Oh...my...banana bread coffee cake. This recipe is *dangerously* good. I made 5 loaves, 1 full-sized and 4-mini. One of the mini-loafs....might have disappeared. I'm (cough) not sure what happened to it.

That's not my hand...I swear ;). Remember that post about not being perfect? Oops. I ate an entire mini-loaf.

Some inspiration...let's jump to the end result pictures!

Hmmm...that one mini loaf seems to be missing half =). The big one has no chocolate, three of the little ones have gluten free chocolate chunks. One plain.

In the pan.

A quick flip trick and out of the pan to cool =).

I found this specific recipe on PaleOMG; Another one of Juli's amazing posts. Juli has been kind enough to allow me to re-post the ingredients of her recipes, but she has asked that I omit the instructions so you give her blog some traffic as well. Don't worry, I'll still put up lots of pics and my extra comments. You can find the full recipe here. Juli didn't use any chocolate, and neither did I in the big loaf. I experimented with adding chocolate in the smaller loafs and it worked wonderfully in my humble opinion. In the smaller pan I did reduce the cook-time a little bit. The fork test was applied ;).

Without further ado (and before I try to eat any more of this) let's go on this delicious baking journey together. This is my second time baking. Ever. I'm proud of myself =). Here it goes!

What you'll need (Ingredients)

-3 brown bananas, mashed

-¼ cup maple syrup

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-3 eggs

-½ cup almond butter (or other nut/seed butter)

-¼ cup coconut flour

-½ teaspoon baking soda

-½ teaspoon baking powder

-1 teaspoon cinnamon

-pinch of salt

For the toppings

-4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) grass fed butter, at room temperature (or coconut oil)

-2 tablespoons coconut sugar

-2 tablespoons almond flour

-1 teaspoon cinnamon

-¼ cup pecans, crushed

All of the ingredients. I used all of my ghee making two batches of this goodness. In the small jar on the left is the coconut flour, the jar to the right of that has almond flour.

It begins. Round one. I didn't have any brown bananas so I just used some organic very-yellow ones.

Mmm...yep: Maple Syrup! I could probably just have stopped here and ate this bowl. That wouldn't be healthy...but I'm sure it would have been a sugar-overload of deliciousness.

Note: First time mixing. I used a fork (why, I'm not sure). Wait until round two for improved technique.

Forking around with the dry ingredients ;).

Round one into the pan.

Round one toppings. Basically butter and sugar. No wonder it tastes so darn good.

Toppings....on top ;).

Go go round two!

Mmm...eggs.

Oil up those mini-pans like it's a hot day at the beach.

Improved strategy! That's documented learning for ya. Go-go gadget whisk!

Round two had chocolate (and a reduced cook time).

And the end result! Again =).

Wow...these are amazing. I think I found my go-to special treat recipe. Now to give it all away (with the exception of two of those mini-loafs. They're staying with me! One is already gone...tomorrow I'll try to only eat half of the other. Then I can enjoy this treat for three days. The rest I will bestow upon my co-workers and possibly my yoga studio (Bala Yoga - Love them!).

As always...I want to hear from you! Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Lay 'em on me!

Yours truly,

The Simple Paleo Cook