Banana Bread: A Healthy(ier) Way

My mom is an exceptional cook and baker and one of my favorites has always been her homemade banana bread.

I’ve been trying to eat healthier, so Wednesday night I swapped out some of her tried and true ingredients for a healthy-ish alternative and the results were awesome. Let’s just say that I only made the banana bread two nights ago and it’s already almost gone. Hence, the picture below is not my loaf of nanner bread, but an almost identical virtual representation.

Here’s how you do (mom’s original ingredients are in parenthesis if you want to go that route)

Ingredients:

2 overripe, mashed up bananas

1/4 c vegetable oil (1/4 c. melted butter)

1 egg

3/4 c. maple syrup (3/4 c. sugar)

1 1/2 c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Directions

Mix the bananas, vegetable oil (or butter), egg, and maple syrup together in a large bowl. Mix everything else together in a medium bowl and then mix the stuff in the medium bowl with the stuff in the large bowl. Pour into a loaf pan lined with tin foil (makes cleanup a breeze).

Bake at 325 for 1 hour. Let cool before slicing.

Notes

If you’d like, you can add 1 cup of your favorite chopped nuts to the mixture for banana nut bread. My favorite thing to add is dark chocolate chips (and then I eat the banana bread with a solid layer of peanut butter… yummmm) but you can also get creative by adding white chocolate chips, dried fruits or anything else your heart desires.

To make it even healthier you can play around with different varieties of oil. Walnut oil might be especially tasty if you also add walnuts; you could also try flaxseed oil for those goodforya Omega 3’s.

And you could also try out different varieties of flour (like whole wheat for a wheatier flavor). I actually meant to use almond flour in my Wednesday evening adventure because I thought I had some and then realized I didn’t. C’est la vie.