Healthy Vegan Banana Bread Recipe Now that the weather is getting to be a bit cooler, I have a strong urge to be busting out my baking supplies and warming up the oven. I mean, who doesnt love the smell of delicious baked goods wafting throughout the house. For me, the quintessential baked good is banana bread. My mother would save loads of overripe bananas in our freezer, waiting to defrost them to make her delicious easy banana bread recipe. Just thinking of her moist banana bread recipe makes me salivate a little bit. However, I have found two main issues with her original recipe: 1) Like most traditional baked goods, its far from a low-cal option. 2) Its definitely not vegan-friendly. With a few twists, I remade my mothers traditional moist banana bread recipe so that its not only a healthy banana bread recipe, but a vegan banana bread recipe too! HEALTHY VEGAN BANANA BREAD Makes: One loafTakes: About 1 hour and 25 minutes, not including prep Ingredients 2 very ripe bananas, mashed into a pulp ½ cup homemade applesauce (To make your own applesauce, you can use my go-to recipe, which can be found on favedietsblog 1 ¾ cup stone-ground whole wheat flour 1 ½ cup sugar (I used regular refined sugar because its all I had on hand. Im sure you could also use raw sugar or a sugar substitute suitable for baking) ½ cup canola oil ¼ cup vanilla almond milk or vanilla soy milk 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt Directions Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees F. Spray a 3x5x9-inch loaf pan with cooking spray Mash the bananas in a large bowl, and combine with the applesauce, oil and almond milk To the bowl, add the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Stir to combine Pour the mixture into the loaf pan and bake for 1 hour and 25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean The end result is simply delicious. It is a bit more crumbly than your average banana bread recipe because it has no eggs to bind everything together, but it is still plenty moist. Using whole wheat flour adds lots of fiber, protein and nutrients to the mix, as does using my Homemade Applesauce instead of eggs. If youre worried about your calorie and/or sugar intake, opt for a sugar substitute that is suitable for baking and make sure youre using unsweetened almond milk. Also, this would be great with chopped nuts, say walnuts or pecans. I didnt have any on hand, but they would be a great flavor and texture addition to this. Ive been eating this for breakfast for the past week, and I got to say that it easily beats cereal in the morning. Enjoy! Matthew Kaplan is the Editor for FaveDiets, a free online resource featuring hundreds of free healthy recipes, healthy cooking tips and loads more. Be sure to check out FaveDiets on Facebook (facebook/FaveDiets) and on Twitter (@FaveDiets).
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 03:06:54 +0000