Kitchen Living Room

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Maple Syrup Banana Bread

I've loved banana bread for as long as I can remember. When I was little my mom and I would make it and I would eat it with butter or cream cheese. My tastebuds have come a long way from those days. I no longer gleefully pour white sugar on my corn flakes (that used to make my brother soooo mad, "Doesn't she know they're already sweetened?!") or eat brown sugar by the spoonful (or handful, whatever works). But I am still baking banana bread every time a spotted brown banana appears on my countertop. Here is what, to date, is my favorite banana bread recipe ever. Also, it's vegan.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix dry ingredients:
2 cups unbleached organic white flour (in the future I'll try out wheat, but for now I've only tried white)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Mix wet ingredients:
2 mashed medium-small bananas
1/2 cup original unsweetened almond milk
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup vegan stick butter (I've also used cow butter, both work fine)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine wet & dry ingredients. Butter loaf pan. Add dough to pan. Spread out dough to level it a bit. Bake for 45 minutes. (Check often.)

You could definitely add walnuts to this recipe. In fact, I recommend it. But I didn't list them in the ingredients because personally I never have them in the kitchen!

I really like this recipe because it doesn't use applesauce like most vegan baking recipes; I usually don't have it on hand. It also doesn't use eggs - I never have those! It uses maple syrup instead of refined sugar. I don't like to bake or cook with regular sugar. That's just a personal preference. I really want to explore baking with fruit juice as a sweetener. That would be fun.

Feel free to de-veganize or do whatever you want to this recipe! This is just what has worked for me. Let me know how it turns out (and what you substituted/added/removed) in the comments.

On the braces front, I can eat banana bread just fine although it does tend to get stuck. I've also been eating most everything else, even really crunchy pita chips. The only foods I have been avoiding are sticky things. But that's not even an issue because there aren't any super sticky foods that I eat regularly. So far no broken brackets!

2 comments:

  1. You are an awesome cook! I envy your creativity.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks! I'm only creative with baking though. Other kinds of cooking intimidate me!

    ReplyDelete