Paleo Banana Bread

Paleo Banana Bread

This beautiful recipe has been adapted from the amazing and talented Teresa Cutter who is also known as The Healthy Chef. Teresa was my first and still is one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to healthy, wholesome cooking. I was first introduced to her cooking the first day I met my wonderful boyfriend. He sent me off to work with a freshly baked Muesli Muffin made following a recipe of Teresa's. Since that day, I have gradually found my own feet through  reading the blogs and recipes of other healthy bakers, researching foods and ingredients and the way they work together, learning and loving the Paleo way of eating and experimenting (sometimes with failures) with my own ideas. The ingredients used in a lot of my cooking and baking are often less tried and tested than standard ingredients hence the need for experimentation. Luckily, almond meal subs into many cake recipes - and certainly banana bread recipes, almost as if standard processed flour was used. Personally I think that almond meal gives a nuttiness and moistness that flour does not.

This recipe has such a beautiful banana flavour and is somewhere in between the texture of a banana bread and a banana cake. The lack of refined flour and sugar along with the inclusion of heart healthy fat (from the almond and macadamia nut oil) makes this bread not only delicious as a morning or afternoon tea treat but also provides our bodies with goodness that you certainly don't find in store bought banana breads which are generally loaded with sugar and refined grains/flours. Enjoy this bread knowing that you are doing yourself a load of good.


Original recipe can be found here. I reduced the honey and the oil and added the apple sauce.

Ingredients  

4 medium sized bananas - preferably heading towards over-ripe (not too ripe).
3 eggs
1 tbs vanilla essence
30g honey
30g macadamia nut oil
2 tbs apple sauce
Juice from half a lime
tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp baking soda
2 cups almond meal
30g chia seeds
Handful of walnuts (optional)

Method

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C

Spray loaf pan with spray olive oil or spread oil of choice with scrunched up baking paper.
Combine 3 bananas, eggs, vanilla, oil and apple sauce in a bowl.
Add baking powder and lime juice - combine
Mix in almond meal and chia seeds.
Pour mixture into prepared loaf tin, halve the remaining banana and place on top as pictured if desired.
I have also topped the bread with some walnuts which I broke into slightly smaller pieces just with hands - these are optional and can also be added to the mixture if you wish to have a little extra crunch!

Bake for 45 min - 1 hour depending on oven and basically until the top has browned and a skewer comes out clean. This bread is fairly moist when cooked and especially when warm so it is important to let it cool completely before removing from the pan.

....If you are impatient like me, you could quite well lose the bottom of the loaf :|.

If you would like a drier loaf, I would recommend covering the top with foil to avoid over browning and letting it cook for a further 10 minutes or so. I have not tried this though so tread carefully! The moistness of the above recipe and method scored rave reviews from all of my trusty testers : ).

Yum : ).