Coconut Sweet Bread
In Barbados Coconut Sweet Bread (Recipe) is a standard pastry, Bajans love it. It’s made in almost every bakery in Barbados; sometimes with slight variations from bakery to bakery or home to home.
These variations can be with or without, raisins, cherries or egg mixed into the dough but, coconut is always standard; even then, some will do it differently; like some will have the grated coconut mixed in the dough while some will only place a heavy amount in the middle.
Unlike other breads and cakes, there is no special occasion for coconut sweet bread, it’s on tables every day all year.
Baking trouble
Baking Coconut Bread can sometimes be a nightmare if you’re doing it for the first time.
I have friends who constantly complain about the dough not rising and or not cooked in the middle.
I always tell them to make sure of these points: check that the flour is bread flour or strong white flour which is higher in gluten content than regular flour, make certain the flour, baking powder or yeast isn’t outdated.
If you’re going with baking powder and still don’t get the results you want then try making your coconut sweet bread in a smaller pan, if it comes out fine then maybe your temperature was too high for the larger pan.
Keep trying until you perfect this delicacy.
Banana Bread
I like my banana bread (Recipe), soft, moist, and rich with banana flavour. Bananas are plentiful in countryside of Barbados. Go and get the best bajan green, ripe bananas for your banana bread if you want the real true flavour from market or roadside vendors.
Is it ready?
Banana bread can be tricky to test to know when it’s ready; I use a knife or toothpick to test. If I stick a toothpick in and it comes out clean, it’s done, If it comes out smeared with batter, test again at 5-minute intervals. This may depend on how moist you like your bread and the individual recipe.
Once you have taken the banana bread out of the oven and it has started cooling, you are not in much of a position to fix it to the point of it being like it would have been had you kept cooking it until it was done.
Splitting at the top
The crack down the middle is usually caused when the top of the loaf sets before the loaf is finished rising.
As the loaf continues to rise, the stress on the cooked top surface causes the crack. The tricky part is how to solve the problem. Start by lowering the temperature.
Just like Coconut Sweet Bread, you can find banana bread in almost every bakery across Barbados.
Passion Fruit Cake
Passion fruit cake (Recipe) isn’t a big contender in the Barbados marketplace but many people still make this mouth water pasty when they can get the passion fruits.
They are some farmers who plant them but if you want you can visit the vendors on the Mighty Grynner Highway on Saturday mornings, then you can be sure to get as many as you want for your recipe.
This cake celebrates passion fruits in all their glory. It cozies up the kitchen with its warm sweet aroma and is delicious to the last bite.
It’s the kind of cake you can make for an evening for your guests at a party or just about any occasion.
Pineapple Coffee Cake
I’m not 100% sure why it’s called Coffee Cake (Recipe). I guess the cake is meant to be eaten with a coffee beverage, hence the name, coffee cake.
They’re a common part of a coffee break, a tradition that goes back to the first coffee houses in the late 16th century: but Bajans consume them with anything.
Barbados has a few pineapple growers so this makes great sense to make Pineapple coffee cake.
Pineapple in cake mix
You could try that, but be very, very careful that the mixture does not end up to liquid. The worst that can happen is that the water prevents the cake from rising.
To prevent this from happening, you can choose to boil out most of the water by cooking the water out in on medium heat. This way you get a more condensed and less liquid substance.
Here is a pro tip, pineapple juice is often a replacement for alcoholic ingredients in baking, so you could use it instead of rum or sherry for example.
But it has no coffee
Coffee cake is called that because it’s an easy-to-make cake that, like a donut, and other morning baked goods, tastes good with coffee. Peanut butter doesn’t have any butter in it.
Coffee cakes aren’t plentiful in many bakeries in Barbados but a small select few.
Cakes are undeniably everyone’s favorite dessert. You can never say no to a slice, and all your fear of calories melt away like icing when you come across a delicious cake.
So, if you love cake so much then why not learn to bake one right at home. A pineapple coffee cake is easy to make and does not require much hassle, and you get to enjoy a delicious cake.
Soursop Cake
Soursop cake (Recipe) is easy to do, yet a really good tasting cake. It is made from a tropical fruit found in Barbados. I think that the difficult part is to find the soursop.
Soursop is very popular for making juices or punches and known to have medicinal properties.
When you’re ready to use the soursop, it should be ripe, to know if soursop is ripe you only need to touch it. When it feels soft and the skin comes off easily then it’s time to eat it.
You should wash it first and then cut it in half lengthwise. Take out the center and start taking off the skin with your fingers and prepare to get messy.
I liked the soursop cake very much and I’m sure it will be a dessert that I will do from now on every time I can get my hands on soursop.
Whatever you do with soursop you’ll be sure to enjoy the result.
