Most coconut banana bread is a plain banana loaf with a handful of shredded coconut stirred through it. This one is built the other way round: the coconut is toasted first, cocoa goes into the dry ingredients, and four ounces of melted semisweet chocolate is drizzled into the batter while the mixer runs.
The result is a coconut banana bread that is dark, barely sweet and closer to a chocolate loaf than to a breakfast quick bread. Half a cup of sugar is all that goes in, which sounds wrong until you taste it against the chocolate and the sweetened coconut. A tablespoon of turbinado sugar scattered over the top before baking gives the crust the crunch the crumb deliberately does not have.
- Toasted coconut rather than raw, so it tastes nutty instead of just chewy
- Cocoa in the dry mix and melted chocolate in the wet, for two kinds of chocolate flavor
- Only half a cup of sugar in the whole loaf, so it reads as adult rather than as cake
- Greek yogurt and oil together keep it moist for three days without any butter
- A turbinado sugar crust that crackles under the knife
- One bowl of dry, one mixer bowl of wet, and no creaming stage to get wrong
A coconut banana bread this dark rests on three decisions, and none of them is the banana.
- What Makes This Coconut Banana Bread Different
- Ingredient Notes
- Toasted Coconut Beats Raw Coconut Every Time
- How To Make Coconut Banana Bread
- How To Tell When Coconut Banana Bread Is Done
- Why Overripe Bananas Matter So Much
- Make It Ahead
- Storing Coconut Banana Bread
- Variations and Substitutions
- What to Serve with Coconut Banana Bread
- Coconut Banana Bread FAQ
What Makes This Coconut Banana Bread Different
The first decision is the sugar. Half a cup across twelve slices is roughly a third of what a standard banana loaf carries. The bananas bring their own sweetness, the semisweet chocolate brings more, and the sweetened coconut brings the rest. Take the granulated sugar any higher and the cocoa disappears underneath it.
The second is the fat. Vegetable oil rather than butter, half a cup of it, plus half a cup of Greek yogurt. Oil stays liquid at room temperature, so the crumb is still soft on day three when a butter loaf has gone firm. The yogurt adds acidity, which the baking soda needs, and a little protein for structure.
The third is toasting the coconut. Ten minutes in the oven while it preheats turns shredded coconut from a chewy filler into something nutty and aromatic. Most recipes skip it. It is the single biggest improvement you can make to any coconut banana bread.
What you end up with is a loaf that slices cleanly, is not sticky, and tastes of chocolate first and banana second. If you want the reverse, this is the wrong recipe.
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Ingredient Notes
Coconut banana bread runs to fourteen ingredients, most of them already in the cupboard. Exact amounts are in the recipe card below.
- Semisweet chocolate: four ounces, chopped and melted, not chips. Chips carry stabilizers that keep them from flowing, and the point here is that the chocolate disperses into the batter rather than sitting in it as lumps.
- Sweetened shredded coconut: half a cup, toasted. Unsweetened works and gives a drier, more assertive coconut flavor, but then add two more tablespoons of sugar to the batter.
- Overripe bananas: two medium, which mash to about three quarters of a cup. Black-skinned is ideal. Yellow bananas with a few freckles are not ripe enough and the loaf will taste flat.
- Greek yogurt: half a cup, low-fat or full-fat. Sour cream substitutes exactly. Plain yogurt that is not strained is too thin and will make the batter slack.
- Cocoa powder: a quarter cup, natural rather than Dutch-process, because the recipe leans on baking soda and needs the acidity that natural cocoa provides.
- Turbinado sugar: one tablespoon over the top. Demerara works. Granulated sugar dissolves and disappears, so it is not a substitute.
- Cinnamon: half a teaspoon, which you will not taste directly. It makes the chocolate read as deeper.
Toasted Coconut Beats Raw Coconut Every Time
Raw shredded coconut is mostly texture. It is chewy and faintly sweet and it does not smell of much. Ten minutes at 350F changes that completely.
Spread it thin on a sheet pan, one layer deep, and put it in while the oven comes up to temperature. Stir it at the four minute mark and again at the seven. It goes from white to pale gold to burnt in about ninety seconds at the end, so stay in the kitchen.
Pull it at pale gold, not brown. It carries on cooking on the hot pan, and it also gets a second baking inside the loaf.
Let it cool before it goes in. Warm coconut folded into batter melts the chocolate that is already suspended in there and streaks it.
Toasting drives off surface moisture and browns the natural sugars, and that is what produces the nutty smell. It is the same reason toasted nuts taste different from raw ones. In a coconut banana bread where the chocolate is doing most of the work, this is what keeps the coconut from being merely a texture.
How To Make Coconut Banana Bread
Coconut banana bread is a mixer recipe, so have the eggs and yogurt out of the refrigerator for half an hour first. Cold ingredients seize the melted chocolate into specks the moment it hits the bowl.
- First, toast the coconut while the oven heats to 350F, and line a 9×5-inch loaf pan with a parchment sling, buttered at the short ends.
- Next, melt the chopped chocolate over barely simmering water and set it aside to cool to warm rather than hot. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon together.
- Then beat the eggs and granulated sugar for 3 minutes, until pale, and mix in the yogurt, oil and mashed bananas.
- After that, drizzle in the melted chocolate with the mixer on low, scrape the bowl properly, add the dry ingredients until they just disappear, and fold in the cooled coconut by hand.
- Finally, level the batter in the pan, scatter the turbinado sugar over it and bake 60 to 70 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then lift it out onto a rack.
How To Tell When Coconut Banana Bread Is Done
Color is useless here. The loaf is dark brown going in and dark brown coming out, so the usual visual cue tells you nothing.
Use a thermometer. The center should read 200F to 205F. This is the only reliable test for a chocolate loaf and it takes two seconds.
The skewer test still works, with one caveat: melted chocolate stays soft at baking temperature, so a smear of chocolate on the skewer is not the same as raw batter. Look for moist crumbs, not liquid.
The top will crack down the middle. That is correct and not a fault. A quick bread with this much leavening always splits along the ridge.
Press the center gently. It should spring back rather than leave a dent.
At 60 minutes start checking. At 70 it is done or overdone. An oven that runs hot will finish this loaf in 55, and the difference between a moist coconut banana bread and a dry one is about five minutes.
Why Overripe Bananas Matter So Much
In a coconut banana bread a yellow banana and a black one are chemically different fruit, and swapping one for the other is the commonest reason a banana loaf tastes of nothing.
The starch converts to sugar. A green banana is mostly starch. By the time the skin is covered in black patches, most of that has broken down into fructose, glucose and sucrose, which is why an overripe banana tastes twice as sweet.
The aroma arrives late. The smell people identify as banana comes largely from isoamyl acetate, the ester responsible for banana aroma, and the fruit produces most of it during ripening. An underripe banana has barely any.
They mash instead of lumping. Ripe fruit breaks down to a smooth puree with a fork. Firm bananas leave pale chunks that stay visible in the finished slice.
To speed them up, bake unpeeled bananas at 300F for 15 to 20 minutes until the skins blacken, then cool and scoop. This gets you sweetness and moisture but noticeably less aroma than natural ripening, so it is a rescue rather than a plan.
Make It Ahead
Coconut banana bread is one of the few loaves that is genuinely better the day after it is baked, so building in a day is not a compromise.
Toast the coconut days early. It keeps two weeks in a sealed jar at room temperature and toasting a whole bag at once costs nothing extra.
Mash the bananas up to a day ahead and refrigerate them with a squeeze of lemon juice pressed against the surface, then let them come back to room temperature.
Bake the loaf the day before serving. Wrapped once cool, the crumb settles and the chocolate flavor comes forward. Day two is the peak.
Do not mix the batter ahead. The baking soda starts reacting with the yogurt as soon as they meet, and a batter left standing an hour rises noticeably less.
What you can do is freeze the whole loaf and finish it later. Slices thaw in twenty minutes on the counter, which makes a frozen loaf more useful than a fresh one for weekday breakfasts.
Storing Coconut Banana Bread
- Room temperature, wrapped: coconut banana bread keeps 3 days in foil or an airtight tin. Day two is better than day one.
- Refrigerated: up to 1 week, but it firms up. Ten seconds in the microwave brings a slice back.
- Frozen, whole: 3 months, double wrapped. Thaw overnight in the wrapping so the condensation forms outside it.
- Frozen, sliced: the more useful option. Freeze slices on a tray, then bag them, and toast from frozen.
- Never in a plastic bag while warm. Trapped steam turns the turbinado crust to syrup and the top goes tacky.
Variations and Substitutions
The flour, the leavening and the bananas are structural. Everything else is open.
- Coconut oil for the vegetable oil: melted and measured liquid, it pushes the coconut flavor harder and firms the crumb slightly when cold.
- Dark chocolate at 70 percent: less sweet again, and worth adding two tablespoons of sugar to compensate.
- Macadamias or toasted pecans: half a cup, folded in with the coconut.
- Coconut on top as well: two tablespoons of the toasted coconut held back and scattered with the turbinado sugar. Tent the loaf with foil after 40 minutes or it burns.
- Muffins: the same batter fills twelve cups and bakes in 20 to 24 minutes at 350F.
- No cocoa: replace it with an extra quarter cup of flour and you have a plain coconut banana loaf with chocolate through it.
- Rum: a tablespoon of dark rum with the wet ingredients, which suits coconut better than vanilla does.
What to Serve with Coconut Banana Bread
This coconut banana bread is dark and only just sweet, so it takes to salt and to dairy rather than to more sugar.
- Salted butter on a warm slice, which is better than any glaze you could put on it.
- Cream cheese whipped with a little honey, spread thick.
- Black coffee or an espresso, since the cocoa and the coffee reinforce each other.
- Toasted under the broiler for a minute and served with vanilla ice cream as a dessert.
- Next to a coconut bread with glaze on a brunch table where one loaf is sweet and one is not.
For more of the same family, there is my easy hummingbird bread, which uses banana and pineapple together, and if you have bananas left over, banana pudding parfaits or banana pudding cupcakes will use them up.
Here is what readers ask most often.
Coconut Banana Bread FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use chocolate chips instead of melting chocolate?
You can, but you get a different loaf. Chips are made with stabilizers that hold their shape through baking, so they stay as discrete pieces rather than dispersing. The batter will be paler and the chocolate flavor will arrive in bursts instead of running through every bite. If chips are what you have, use six ounces folded in at the end and add two extra tablespoons of cocoa to the dry ingredients to make up the background flavor.
Why is my loaf dry?
Almost always overbaking, because a dark loaf gives no visual warning. Coconut banana bread with this much cocoa in it looks identical at 55 minutes and at 75. Start checking at 60 and pull it at 200F to 205F in the center. The other cause is underripe bananas, which contribute far less moisture as well as less sweetness. Two medium black-skinned bananas should give you three quarters of a cup of puree; if yours give less, top it up rather than baking short.
Can I make it gluten-free?
Yes, and it takes to it better than most quick breads because the cocoa and coconut hide the texture change. Swap the flour one for one with a gluten-free blend that already contains xanthan gum, and let the batter rest 15 minutes in the pan before baking so the starches hydrate. Expect a slightly denser slice and add about five minutes to the bake.
More Questions About Coconut and Chocolate
Good to Know
Do I have to toast the coconut?
No, and the loaf still works. What you lose is the nutty aroma, which is most of what the coconut contributes once it is buried in chocolate. Untoasted, it reads as texture only. Ten minutes on a sheet pan while the oven preheats is as close to free as a step gets, so it is worth doing.
Can I use unsweetened coconut?
Yes. It is drier and more strongly flavored, and the loaf comes out noticeably less sweet, which some people prefer. Add two tablespoons of granulated sugar to the batter if you swap, and toast it for a minute less because it browns faster without the sugar coating.
My chocolate seized into specks. What happened?
The batter was too cold. Melted chocolate hitting cold eggs and refrigerator-cold yogurt sets instantly into flecks rather than blending. Bring the eggs and yogurt to room temperature, and let the melted chocolate cool only to warm before it goes in. If it has already happened the loaf is perfectly good, it just looks freckled instead of uniformly dark.
Can I double it?
Yes, in two separate pans rather than one large one. Doubling into a single deep pan gives you a raw center by the time the outside is dry. Two 9×5-inch pans on the same rack, with a couple of inches between them, bake in the same 60 to 70 minutes.
A coconut banana bread built on toasted coconut and melted chocolate is a different thing from the loaf most people mean by the name, and the half cup of sugar is what lets it be. If you want the sweeter, paler version alongside it, my coconut bread with glaze is the one to make.
Coconut Banana Bread with Dark Chocolate
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Ingredients
For the Pan and the Topping
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter for the parchment sling and the pan ends
- 1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut toasted and cooled
- 1 tablespoon turbinado sugar scattered over the top before baking
The Batter
- 4 ounces semisweet chocolate chopped, not chips
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder natural, not Dutch-process
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 large eggs at room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt at room temperature
- 2 medium overripe bananas mashed, about 3/4 cup
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
Equipment
- 9x5x3 loaf pan
- mixer
- bowl
- Spatula
- Wire rack
Instructions
Toast the Coconut and Melt the Chocolate
- Heat the oven to 350F. Spread the shredded coconut one layer deep on a sheet pan and toast it while the oven comes up, 8 to 10 minutes, stirring at 4 minutes and again at 7. Pull it at pale gold, since it browns fully in the last ninety seconds, and set it aside to cool.
- Butter a 9x5-inch loaf pan and line it with a parchment sling. Melt the chopped chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, then take it off and let it cool until it is warm rather than hot.
Mix the Batter
- Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon into a bowl and set it aside.
- Beat the eggs and granulated sugar on medium speed until pale and thick, about 3 minutes. Add the yogurt, oil and mashed bananas and mix until combined. Both the eggs and the yogurt need to be at room temperature or the chocolate will seize into specks in the next step.
- With the mixer on low, drizzle in the melted chocolate, using the cup the oil was measured in so none of it clings. Scrape the sides and base of the bowl, add the dry ingredients and mix only until they disappear, then fold in the cooled coconut by hand.
Bake the Loaf
- Scrape the batter into the pan and level the top. Scatter the turbinado sugar evenly over it.
- Bake 60 to 70 minutes. Color is no guide on a cocoa loaf, so test with a thermometer: the center should read 200F to 205F. A skewer should come out with moist crumbs, though a smear of melted chocolate is not the same as raw batter.
Cool and Keep
- Cool the loaf 10 minutes in the pan, then run a knife around the ends and lift it out by the parchment onto a wire rack. Let it cool completely before slicing or the crumb tears.
- Wrap it once it is fully cold, never while warm, since trapped steam turns the turbinado crust tacky. It keeps 3 days at room temperature and is at its best on day two.