Toasted coconut and banana friands

Driving in Sao Paulo can be quite tiring and in the middle of the daily traffic jams the radio becomes my best friend.
Even though I listen to music most of the time, I love to catch Carla Pernambuco’s comments about food on MitFM. I’m a huge fan of her work and can’t wait to have dinner at her restaurant again.
Last week she was talking about financiers and friands and it suddenly hit me: I hadn’t posted these coconut friands yet!

So there you have it: friands with a very tropical feeling. And to avoid sticking problems, I used a wonderful silicone pan Margarete sent me as a gift. Thank you, sweetie!

Toasted coconut and banana friands
from Little Cafe Cakes

½ cup (45g) fine desiccated coconut
½ cup (50g) sweetened flaked coconut
175g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 ½ cups (210g) icing sugar, sifted
½ cup (70g) all purpose flour, sifted
6 egg whites
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1-2 bananas, sliced

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF. Grease well 10 individual cake or muffin pans.
Place both measures of coconut on a baking tray and toast in oven for 5 minutes, turning once, until golden. Cool.
Place all ingredients except bananas into a mixing bowl. Stir until just combined.
Spoon mixture into prepared pans to just over ½ full. Top each with a couple of banana slices. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden.
Allow to stand in pans for 5 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.

Makes 10 – I halved the recipe, used 3-tablespoon-capacity pans and got 15 tiny friands