Biscoff Oreo Banana Bread

I swear I'm the sort that simply gain weight just by looking at pictures of food. I mean, I look at food all da time (via Instagram, via the Internet, via magazines, via everyday life). Haha. It's a terrifying thought if our weight is based on what we look at.

Biscoff Oreo Banana Bread

First attempt

For my first attempt, I actually made the loaf with some leftover homemade almond butter I had in the house. And reduced the sugar quantity drastically. It turned out quite bland, and even my Dad commented that it needed sugar. When the Dad says so, I know for sure the sugar levels were too low, cos my Dad doesn't like sweet stuff to begin with. Nevertheless, it was such an easy recipe to whip up, so I knew that I'll be remaking it again. With cookie butter in fact.

So as I was saying, with all that food browsing I do, I get to know of food from all over the world. Like how I never knew the existence of Biscoff (or Speculoos) cookie butter spread. I know. The travesty of it. You can't blame a girl though. Not when it's not sold in her country of residence.

Nevertheless, I developed a desire for it, probably with the cookie butter spread's description that it tasted exactly the same as speculoos cookies (or lotus caramelised biscuits, which thank gosh, can be found locally). The cookie butter spread comes in creamy and crunchy forms, just like the ubiquitous peanut butter spread.

So imagine my delight when I managed to spy the Speculoos cookie butter spread sitting on the top most shelf at a Cold Storage last December. Even though it was the creamy bottle (it's crunchy > creamy ALWAYS), I grabbed a bottle of it without much thought. I already had a bottle of Biscoff (crunchy) that was almost finished (courtesy from my colleague who had bought a bottle for me through Amazon) and I wanted to compare the tastes of both brands. Then a few weeks later, I spied a rack full of (crunchy AND creamy - wails) Speculoos bottles at Candy Empire (Vivo). Aargh.

Anyway, so I made the loaf again using the bottle of creamy Biscoff cookie butter, and increased the sugar quantity. The loaf turned out quite well tastewise. But I think I overbaked it just a little. Since the batter was very moist, I left it for a little longer in the oven, about an hour, and thus I recommend to check on it every 5 minutes after the 45 minutes mark to ensure you don't overbake it.

Oh, and to compare Speculoos and Biscoff, I found that Biscoff was slightly sweeter compared to the Speculoos version. I need to get my hands on a crunchy Biscoff bottle though, to be 100% sure. However, I popped by Candy Empire (Star Vista) a few days ago and I found that they had ran outta stock of the cookie butter spread (at both Star Vista and Vivo outlets). WHUT! I do hope they will replenish stocks soon! *cross fingers hard*

Biscoff Oreo Banana Bread (adapted from Ashton at Something Swanky)
(makes one 8" x 4" loaf)

80g sugar
100g brown sugar
1/2 cup coconut oil (or vegetable oil)
1/2 cup Biscoff (or any other nut butter - I've tried it with homemade almond butter)
2 overripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
3/4 cup crushed Oreos (for batter)
1/2 cup Oreos, crushed (for topping)

Preheat oven to 175°C.
Grease a 8" by 4" loaf pan and set aside.
Whisk together oil, cookie butter and sugars in a large bowl.
Add the bananas, eggs, yogurt, baking soda, vanilla and salt. Whisk to combine.
Add the sifted flour, whisking lightly until just combined. Add the crushed Oreos when there are still streaks of flour in the batter, then continue mixing till it's a homogeneous batter. Be careful not to overmix.
Sprinkle the remaining crushed Oreos over the batter.
Bake for 45-55 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out mostly clean.
Remove from oven and let it cool in the loaf pan for half an hour.
Remove from loaf pan and cool on cooling rack till completely cool.
Slice and serve (with additional cookie butter if you want!).