Week 6 - Banana Coconut Pikelets

So an abundance of overripe bananas has me making as much banana flavoured things as possible these past two weeks, last weeks Banana Loaf was made twice again and packed up for hubbies lunch box at work much to his delight!


So this week something that is a standard lunch box suggestion, but with a bit of a twist. They take a little bit of extra time to cook, but they are worth it :)


These are great cold in the lunchbox with butter and jam, or even served warm for breakfast, or with ice cream for dessert.


BANANA COCONUT PIKELETS
Ingredients
1 cup SR Flour
2 tbsp Caster Sugar
3/4 Cup Coconut Milk
1 Egg
1 Large Banana
1tsp Vanilla Essence


Method
1. Sift flour and sugar into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre.
2. Mash banana, add egg and coconut milk and vanilla essence and mix well. Pour into the flour mixture and stir well. Whisk until smooth. 
3. Spray a large fry pan with oil or add a little butter. Add tablespoons of mixture and cook until the surface bubbles. Flip over and cook for a further minute or until golden brown.
4. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towel, if serving straight away serve warm, if freezing lay them in a single layer until cool (to prevent sweating)
5. To freeze, place them in single layers in large ziplock bags and freeze in a flat position. 


Notes
You can use evaporated milk with coconut essence instead of coconut milk. If the mixture is too dry add more milk, if it's too wet add more flour. It should be quite a thick batter, still pourable but will hold together once in the pan and not spread too much.


To thaw I have simply been taking them out of the freezer in the morning when getting the school lunches ready, putting a bit of butter and jam on them and wrapping in glad wrap. The kids tell me that they are soft and fluffy and not goopy or dry at school. 


You can add a little cinnamon or nutmeg, pinch of salt even but they are quite tasty without. If you wanted to make them look a little nicer then have slices of banana ready to go, and once the mixture is in the pan add a slice to the top of the pikelet before you flip. 


They turn out denser than a normal fluffy pikelet because of the banana, so you can omit that and just use the slices instead, or even use buttermilk. You can also add dessicated coconut to the mixture for even more flavour. 


I doubled the recipe and got approx 30 pikelets.


As a side note they didn't get rejected from the super strict kindy either!