Best healthy banana bread ever

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to sink my teeth into a big fat slice of my one true pastry vice. BANANA BREAD. No matter how hard I try to stay away, banana bread gets to me every single time. ESPECIALLY if it’s filled with either chopped walnuts or pecans. That’s why I decided to make this loaf of healthy banana bread!

To be fair, this only came about because mother deer decided to buy a huge bag of discounted ripe organic bananas from the store.

We were going through them pretty quickly but I guess since our house is extra warm these days because of indoor heating…they ripened faster than usual.

Which meant that I ended up with a bunch of beautifully spotted bananas.

Usually I would make a huge batch of banana “nice-cream” with my ripe bananas but since it’s still pretty chilly around here…I opted to make something a little more warm and comforting.

And thus this glorious loaf of healthy banana bread was born!

But since I’m on this whole clean eating goal, I decided to go without the refined sugar in this loaf and let the ripe bananas do all the sweetening. But if your bananas aren’t as ripe as mine, you can always add maple syrup or honey to the recipe to sweeten it up even more!

Anyways, I think that lil’ bun has been getting into the whole photography set up thing these days because I left my photo station for a few minutes to grab my camera and I came back to an entire minion family surrounding my cutting board!

I asked her how they got there and she claimed that they “wandered there on their own” because as we all know, minions love their bananas.

I mean look at Dave over here just staring down my loaf with a banana in his arms and  cheeky little Carl on the other side trying to snag a piece!

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Healthy banana bread recipe

Ingredients (makes 1 medium loaf)

3 bananas mashed
1 egg (or 1 tablespoon flax meal + 3 tablespoons water)
1/4 cup coconut oil melted (vegetable oil works as well)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup maple syrup (optional if you want it to be sweeter but I went without)
1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour (all purpose is okay)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt

optional: 1/2 cup toasted chopped pecans or walnuts

Method:

1. Mix the mashed bananas, egg, coconut oil, maple syrup (if using) and vanilla together in a large bowl.
2. Sift in the whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir until just combined.
3. Fold in the toasted chopped pecans. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan.
4. Bake at 350F for 40 – 50 minutes until golden brown.