Clean Baking Banana Bread

The Clean Baking crusade continues! I had some bananas in the freezer and a hankering for banana bread. It took awhile to find a recipe for which I had all the ingredients. Since when do you put milk or a dairy product in banana bread?

I went back to the old trusty well-worn Better Home and Gardens paperback to find a starting recipe.

As per usual, I swapped honey for white sugar, applesauce for oil, wheat pastry flour for white flour, and added some oatmeal.

Clean Baking Banana Bread

1/4 cup quick cooking oatmeal

1 1/2 cup of whole wheat pastry flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 egg

1 cup mashed bananas

1/3 cup honey

1/4 cup applesauce

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grease a loaf pan.
3. Whisk all dry ingredients (oatmeal, flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg) together in a large bowl.
4. Mix all wet ingredients (egg, banana, honey and applesauce) in a smaller bowl.
5. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Mix until blended. Do not over-mix.
6. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Bake for 50-55 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
7. Cool on a rack and then enjoy!

Recipe Review: I probably didn’t need to add the oatmeal but it was still pretty good. Particularly since I feel that no banana bread is complete without a smear of peanut butter on top. I have read somewhere that doing the clean eating swaps works well for quick breads and muffins. Now that I have gotten the hang of these genres, I may need to return to cookies again.