Banana bread – recipe
Do you feel like having a dessert after lunch or dinner, but you don’t have the time or simply don’t fell like making it. We have prepared an excellent and simple recipe for healthy banana bread that takes only 15 minutes to prepare.
Banana bread is a type of bread made from mashed bananas. It is often moist, sweet, cake-like quick bread, similar to a cake. There are quite a few versions and recipes for this delicious dessert, which is very popular abroad. Bananas are really sweet and without them, of course, this recipe would not exist, but then everything else depends a lot on the choice of other ingredients.
With the popularization of baking soda and baking powder, “banana bread” became a popular recipe in American cookbooks in the 1930s. It first appeared in the 1933 cookbook Pillsbury’s Balanced Recipes.
There is a National Banana Bread Day, celebrated on February 23rd of every year. Bananas were exported in the USA in the 1870s, and it took quite some time to appear in the cookbooks as ingredients for dessert recipes. Food historians believe banana bread came about during the great depression when housewives did not want to throw away over-ripe bananas, which at that time were a valued product, others believe that modern banana bread was developed in commercial kitchens to promote flour.
Bananas are a rich source of vitamin B6 and potassium, and are also rich in vitamin C, manganese, magnesium and some other B group vitamins.
Due to their high potassium content, bananas are great for preventing high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, as well as for kidney health. The high content of dietary fibre, such as pectin and resistant starch, slows down the passage of food from the stomach to the small intestine, which in turn slows down the rise of blood sugar levels after a meal and prolongs the feeling of satiety. The dietary fibres found in bananas also promote regular digestion and improve insulin resistance.
Bananas also contain important antioxidants, dopamine and catechins, which contribute to cardiovascular health. The belief that bananas improve mood due to their dopamine content is wrong, as dopamine cannot cross the blood-brain barrier and therefore cannot act directly on the brain.
If we want even slower sugar release into the blood and lower glycemic index, bananas should be eaten together with nuts or nut butter. A common and delicious combination is banana and peanut butter.
Healthy banana bread is ideal for breakfast, as a dessert, a coffee snack, or just a snack for your children. Fresh fruit, an extra tablespoon of peanut butter as a topping or sprinkled walnuts and cocoa powder, goes perfectly with it.
Ingredients for banana bread
- 3 eggs
- 50 g coconut sugar
- 1 dcl coconut oil
- 1 TBS. bio cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
- 2 ripe (brown) bananas
- 125 g coconut yogurt (you can also add plain)
- 200 g flour
- 1 baking powder
- 2 TBS. peanut butter
- 1 dcl rice drink (or regular milk)
Directions
- Mix the wet ingredients first. Whisk 3 eggs with 50 g of sugar. While mixing gradually add the coconut oil, mashed bananas (bananas with peel mash with your palms and then, if necessary, mash them with a fork on a plate), coconut yogurt and peanut butter.
- In a separate bowl, sift the flour and the baking powder, add the cocoa powder and cinnamon. Slowly, while stirring add the dry ingredients to the wet ones, to make the mixture thick. If you add too much cocoa powder or flour, simply dilute the mass with rice milk.
- Pour the mass into the baking pan and spread the peanut butter on top of it. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 40 minutes (ventilated).
- This banana bread is quite light and juicy if you follow the recipe – if you prepare a thinner mass. If you want firmer banana bread, you should prepare thicker mass and bake the bread 5 minutes longer.