Two weekends ago I had a pile of bananas in various stages of nastiness sitting on my counter, which can only mean one thing – banana bread. I already have a banana bread recipe on this site but it is really just a modified version of the lovely, sugar loaded, butter-infused loaf that I grew up with. In essence, my regular banana bread is cake which is nice for a treat but I wanted something that I could eat for breakfast and not feel guilty about.
I didn’t want loads of sugar but I didn’t want it to taste like punishment either. This led me to choose maple syrup as the main sweetener since it not only gives the sweetness I needed, it also gives flavour.
The next challenge was to add more protein to the mix aside from the necessary eggs. The best fit here is greek yogurt. I always buy the 2% greek yogurt since it tastes better but I’m sure that the fat free stuff would work fine here.
Aside from the bananas, the real stars of this recipe are the oatmeal and milled flaxseed. I was very pleased with how much my little Timothy likes this banana bread because like most toddlers, he loves milk and cheese. Milk and cheese don’t always love him though if he doesn’t eat enough fruit and fibre, if you catch my drift. Well, he ate a couple of slices of this bread last weekend and my daycare providers (he currently goes to two places on different home daycares) were very impressed with the end result of the banana bread.
I made this recipe again this weekend but I made the mistake of putting raisins in it. That did not go over very well at all with my little guy. Live and learn I guess. What he did like about the banana bread was that he got to help me make it this time. Every time Tim sees me using the stand mixer, he drags over the stool and is so fascinated by what I’m doing. When I have my act together I pre-measure everything like they do for cooking shows, and I let him pour all the ingredients in to the mixing bowl. When he gets older we will start working on getting him to measure, but for Mama’s sanity and the cleanliness of my small kitchen, the pre-measure method is working very well for us now.
Breakfast Banana Bread
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup rolled oats not instant
- 1/2 cup milled flaxseed
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp fresh grated nutmeg increase if you are using pre-grated
- 1/2 cup maple syrup preferably local to where you are
- 3/4 cup 2% fat greek yogurt
- 2 very ripe bananas mashed
- 1/4 cup butter softened
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 2 eggs lightly beaten
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease a standard loaf pan. Mix by hand or use a stand mixer with the paddle attachment.
- Mix all the dry ingredients together (flour to nutmeg on the list) in a large mixing bowl. Stir the dry ingredients together.
- Mash the bananas with the lemon juice in a small bowl and add the butter to them. Mix together well.
- Add the maple syrup, greek yogurt and banana/butter mixture to the dry ingredients. Mix gently for 10 seconds or so. Add the eggs and mix until well combined. Be careful not to stir too much. Stop mixing when everything is mixed well.
- Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and spread it in the pan evenly.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the centre to test.
- Let the loaf sit in the pan for a minute after you take it out of the oven. I use a thin spatula to loosen the bread from the sides of the pan. Let the banana bread cool on a rack.
I made this but forgot to add the maple syrup (even though i bought a bottle of local stuff too). Fortunately I added in about a half cup of dark chocolate chips, so the end result was good – the chocolate added the much needed sweetness that was lost with the forgotten maple syrup…
The recipe is pretty flexible. Good idea about the chocolate chips. The ripe bananas do provide a good amount of sweetness just on their own. I have made this with gluten-free flour and gluten-free rolled oats. I have also used 3 bananas instead of just two and it worked out well – sometimes you just use what you have 🙂