Looking for something different than your regular banana or chocolate bread? You will be served here, this bread features pandan leaves!
As soon as I shared the recipe for this Marble Cake, I knew I wanted to make something different that would use the same base.
Pandan leaves add a delicious flavor and aroma to this bread. It's a bit difficult to describe what pandan smells/tastes like as it's quite unique. I would say it has a nutty and herbal aroma with undertones of almond. What I know is that the first time I tried it I loved it!
I went with fresh pandan leaves here. Usually, it can be found in Asian stores. If you don't have access to it, feel free to use pandan extract, it's not as natural but it's a good alternative.
We start by blending the liquid ingredients with the pandan leaves: coconut milk for flavor and richness, maple syrup to sweeten, and some oil to make the bread moister. Once smooth, the liquid will have taken a light green color. At this point, I recommend you let it sit 5-10 minutes so it can soak up the flavors of the leaves.
Next, strain to remove the pandan leaves pulp and discard. We now have our pandan flavored liquid mixture!
To keep this bread gluten-free I went with a mix of different flours: almond flour, rice flour, and buckwheat flour. The combination of these three flours gives the bread a soft, non-grainy texture. It's also easy to slice and holds together very well without the need to add flax egg or applesauce.
30 minutes in the oven and you end up with a bright green pandan bread! I can't describe how good your kitchen will smell, especially if you like pandan!
Make sure you don't over bake the bread, you still want it soft and moist and not too golden brown on the edges.
Finally, brush the top of the bread with maple syrup and top with shredded coconut. The maple syrup will not only help the coconut stick to the bread, but it will also make it slightly moister.
This pandan bread is very flavorful, moist, soft, and not overly sweet! It goes perfectly with tea or coffee, but is also great as a mid-morning/afternoon snack!
Let me know in the comments if you try this recipe!
Pandan Coconut Bread (Vegan + GF)
Ingredients
- 1 cup full-fat coconut milk
- ½ cup maple syrup
- ⅓ cup neutral oil or melted coconut oil
- 2 tablespoon unsweetened almond milk
- 4 large pandan leaves
- 1 cup almond flour
- ¾ cup buckwheat flour
- ½ cup rice flour
- ¼ cup tapioca starch
- 1 tablespoon coconut sugar
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
Instructions
- Preheat oven to
320 °F (160°C). - To a blender, add the full-fat coconut milk, maple syrup, oil, almond milk, and pandan leaves. Blend on high speed for about 2 minutes. Let it sit for about 5 minutes so the liquid can absorb the flavor of the pandan leaves.
- In the meantime, in a large mixing bowl, whisk together the almond flour, buckwheat flour, rice flour, tapioca starch, coconut sugar, baking powder, and baking soda.
- Strain the liquid to remove the pandan "pulp" and pour in the liquid into the dry ingredients bowl. Mix using a wooden spoon until you get a smooth and thick batter.
- Pour the batter into two mini 5.75×3-inch loaf pans (or one larger one) lined with parchment paper.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the bread cool for at least 15 minutes before removing from the pans.
- Brush the top of the bread with maple syrup and then sprinkle with shredded coconut.
- Enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee as an afternoon snack, or for breakfast! This pandan coconut bread will keep for up to 4 days stored at room temperature.
Notes
- If you can't find fresh pandan leaves, use ½ teaspoon pandan extract.
Nutrition
Great recipe I cannot wait to try it. My local Asian Market has the extract but I'm going to check for the fresh leaves cuz I'm sure it would make a difference.
I love your recipes and always get excited when I see your email in my inbox keep up the good work I really appreciate it
Thanks for your kind words Julie 🙂
Do you have a recommendation for An alternative to almond flour? We have nut allergies and just curious.
I'm afraid I don't...sorry.
I made some substitutions but was tasty! I subbed buckwheat flour with sorghum flour 1:1, and my pandan leaves were frozen. I used coconut oil in this recipe and I recommend mixing it in later because it separated and got a bit chunky in my Blendtec even though it was melted at first. If I do this again I may do 1.5x the amount of leaves if frozen, and add the oil last. My maple syrup was dark and so was my coconut sugar so the bread was a bit neutral olive in color. Grateful to have come across this recipe!
Glad you still enjoyed the recipe Aluna 🙂 Thanks for your feedback and rating!
Try coconut flour or oat flour
Can you sale this please do it
Sorry I don't!
Looks amazing.
Any alternate for tapioca starch? or can I omit? since I'm trying to stay away corn, potato or tapioca starch. Thank you,
Looks Amazing, I'm adding comments again, it seems I put wrong email add.... 🙁
However, is there any subs for tapioca starch? I'm trying to stay away from corn, potato, tapioca starch. Also, can I use frozen pandan leaves instead of fresh, since that's quite hard to find? Thank you in advance.
Thanks! I would try to omit and increase the rice flour by about 2 tablespoons.
Regarding the pandan leaves, sure you can use frozen!
Thank you so much for quick response. I have another question... for rice flour, are we talking about regular white rice flour, sweet white rice flour?... can it even be brown rice flour? Your bread looks so good, Im so going to try to make this. thank you so much!
I'm talking about white rice flour. I don't recommend using brown rice flour as it will definitely change the texture of the bread and will absorb a different amount of liquid so the recipe would have to be reworked.
In case of using melted coconut oil - I think it might solidify while blending and remain with the pulp, Is it possible to add it after straining the pandan?
I didn't have that problem, but sure you can add it after straining!
Can I use a mix of almond flour + coconut flour only
Hi, was wondering whether there is any alternatives for buckwheat flour? or can i add more of the other flours to substitute?
Hi,
You might want to try oat flour, although I have never tried. Since buckwheat flour makes a big part of the recipe, it's a bit difficult to replace it without changing the ratio of the other ingredients.
Tried this recipe but made it non-GF as I didn't have almond flour and buckwheat flour (so I substituted these with plain flour). However, it did not turn out well! The bread turned out too be overly dense and hard.
Well, I would recommend trying the recipe with the exact ingredients next time, as completely changing the flours also changes the texture.
Does 1/2 tsp just add slight pandan flavor or enough? I love pandan so I want that flavor and aroma to really be there but I don’t want to overdo it. Thoughts on how much the 1/2 tsp does?
Thank you!
It's enough in my opinion, but if you want a nice and natural pandan aroma I would recommend using fresh leaves.
I've made this twice! The second time I used wayyyyy more pandan (almost a whole bag of fresh frozen), and substituted the tapioca flour and some of the buckwheat flour with a 1:1 GF flour blend (Bob's? I think). The first time I made it it had a REALLY strong buckwheat flavor, like too much, to where the pandan barely came through, and it was not beautifully green like this. I think the issue is that the buckwheat flour I used looks nothing like yours! It is very dark and gritty. Is this a special type of buckwheat flour? It still was delicious both times, but I think the second time was a definite improvement... probably because I really like pandan, and I wanted it to be both green and very flavorful without the buckwheat being overpowering. This time it was a dark muddy green, but definitely GREEN, and it was delicious. Just sharing in case people are trying to use whatever buckwheat flour I used!
That is correct, there are two types of buckwheat flour. I have never seen the dark one but some other readers also got the wrong one.
Hi! There is an error in the recipe- 3/4 cup buckwheatflour is not 90gm! Could you please confirm which measurement to use? Thank you!
My husband liked this recipe, despite the fact that I use the wrong type of buckwheat flour. It turned out the color of dark buckwheat because I did not use white buckwheat. You might want to edit the recipe to indicate that white buckwheat flour should be used
Hi Kay,
Sorry to hear you had trouble with this recipe. I will look deeper into it as here, I can only find one type of buckwheat flour, which has a light grey color.
Delicious and easy. Beautifully green. Not too sweet. Thanks for a fantastic recipe.
Glad you enjoyed this pandan bread! Thanks for your feedback April 😉