Healthy Banana Bread Recipe!

Sweets for breakfast are my favorite...I'd much prefer a pastry to eggs any day! If you are like me or just enjoy a nice breakfast pastry from time to time, I have a wonderful, healthy recipe that will keep you on track with your goals but also satiate that need for breakfast sweets! Obviously this can even be eaten as a dessert, but to me, it's breakfast!

Banana Bread:

Ingredients:

1 cup whole wheat flour

¾ cup white flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Dash of nutmeg

¾ cup brown sugar

½ cup unsweetened applesauce (decrease amount of brown sugar if use sweetened)

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ cup low fat buttermilk (can mix ¼ teaspoon lemon juice in ¼ cup skim milk and let stand 10 mins)

3 roasted bananas (instructions to follow)

 

To roast bananas, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Do not peel bananas, lay them on a baking sheet and bake 15-20 minutes. Set aside to let cool before peeling. Once cool enough to handle, peel and mash.

Sidenotes, you may substitute yogurt for the applesauce as well, just follow the same rule, if it is sweetened and not plain, decrease the amount of brown sugar used. Also, you do not have to use roasted bananas for this recipe and can use plain old ripe bananas, I just love the different taste roasting bananas adds to the bread!

To bake the banana bread, keep oven at 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, sift together flours, baking soda and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, beat together the applesauce or yogurt with the brown sugar until well blended. Add in eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add in vanilla extract, then mashed bananas. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk, beginning and ending with dry. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake for 45-55 minutes.

Nutritional information for 10 slices: 174 calories, 1.2 gram of fat, 34.4 grams of carbs, 1.9 grams fiber, 16.4 grams of sugar, 4 grams protein. To increase the protein in the recipe, you can add a scoop of protein powder to the batter with the dry ingredients. This will change the nutritional information according to the specific brand you use.

This bread comes out very moist and pretty dense, like a lot of things baked with applesauce or yogurt. As a general rule of thumb, I’ve found that applesauce or yogurt (especially Greek yogurt) can replace butter or oil in most baked good recipes, except for cookies. The texture is just nowhere near a normal cookie when the fats are replaced…my husband kindly refers to these as ‘mookies,’ a muffin in the form of a cookie!