We interrupt Beet Week to bring you some delicious baking...

In case you were wondering, I've recently started a Statistics course, which is horribly dry (obviously), and explains the recent dramatic increase in the frequency of my blog posts. Good for my blog and my belly, not so good for my homework. Alas, here I am again.

Growing up Jean Paré's "Company's Coming: Muffins & More" cookbook was our baking bible. Every recipe was simple and delicious. One of my favourite part of her original Company's Coming books is that she always included corny jokes on the bottom of the pages throughout, entitled "Paré Pointers". Here are a few gems from Muffins & More:

The girl vampire and the boy vampire were very sad. They loved in vein.

A man who doesn't marry is a real sharp shooter. He never Mrs.

The firefly ran into a fan and was delighted.

What these have to do with baking I will never know, but I like to imagine Jean sitting at home chuckling to herself as she came up with these.

Factoid: Muffins & More was first published in 1983, the year I was born.

Just one look at our copy of this cookbook will tell you how well it has treated us over the years. Favourite recipes are well stained and encrusted with years of spilled sugar and flour. One such page is the banana bread page. It may truly be the best banana bread recipe in the world. Now that I am vegan I have not stopped using this book. Most of her recipes are easily modified to suit a vegan diet. A little egg replacer here, a little soy milk there, and voila!

Factoid: Bananas act as a binding agent and can be used as an egg substitute. In recipes that already have bananas, no other egg replacer is needed, but I like to add a little extra baking powder for lift, and sometimes some soy milk to make up the moisture difference.

We had some bananas sitting on our counter getting soft and spotty, and this can only mean one thing - banana bread. Opposite the well worn banana bread recipe we always use, there sits a recipe for banana coconut loaf. I don't know if it's the blog or the beets, but I was feeling adventurous and decided to stray from the old stand-by, and take a crack at this twist on the classic. After all, it's in Muffins & More, so it MUST be good. And how! This loaf turned out so moist and delicious, I may never make the original again! Ok, that's probably a big lie.

Without further ado, I give you:

Veganized Banana Coconut Loaf

modified from Company's Coming: Muffins & More

1/4 cup soy milk (for stronger coconut flavour use coconut milk)

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup melted vegan margerine

3 mashed ripe bananas

1/2 tsp almond extract

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup flaked coconut

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Beat wet ingredients together in a large bowl.

In a seperate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients. Add to wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Pour into greased 9-inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F until toothpick comes out clean.

I think pecans would taste excellent in place of the walnuts, but we didn't have any on hand. If you have nut allergies, you can either leave them out, or try substituting with sunflower seed.