Banana Bread

My sis-in-law put me onto this recipe a few years ago. It's from Allrecipes.com.

Lately, as with anything I do for a while, I started changing it up.

I assume that's what it's like when you bake bread.  I'm not a bread baker. I would like to be a bread baker. Someday.  But, you know what I mean? You get really good at doing something, you know the recipe by heart and you get so comfortable with it that you can start tweaking it.

I'm a tweaker. I admit it.

I love change. I love to change around my furniture. I inherited that from my mama. I used to come home from school to a "whole new house" when I was a kid. Sometimes is was the living room or my bedroom.  I do that in my house too. When I have time.

Oh. Banana Bread. Yes. So, my tweak is that I switch out half of the flour for oats. Not just any oats, organic rolled oats and Irish steel cut oats.



I love the texture!

Look at all that grainy goodness.

Gives you something to sink your teeth into.

I made 4 mini loaves.

I admit it. (It's a day of confessions.)  I sliced one in half horizontally and toasted it for breakfast this morning and I ate the whole thing!

After my fruit of course.

Slather it with butter.

Oh Baby!

That's good!

Simple ingredients.

Wholegrain goodness.

Low fat. (If you don't put too much butter on it.)

It can't get much better than this.

Unless you have it with coffee.

Banana Oatmeal Bread
1 cup  flour (I use spelt)
1 cup oats (I mix rolled and steel cut)
1 tsp. baking soda
a Dash of cinnamon
1/4 cup oil (I use grapeseed)
1/4 cup applesauce
1/3 cup agave (or honey or sugar)
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/2 cups mashed bananas (or however many brown ones you have laying on the counter, about 3-4)

Preheat oven to 350F (175 C).
Grease baking pans.
Combine dry ingredients.
In separate bowl combine wet ingredients and banana.
Mix wet and dry till just combined and pour into pan.

Bake 20-25 minutes for mini loaves, 50-60 minutes for large loaves, 15-20 for regular muffins, 10-15 mini muffins.

This recipe makes 4 mini loaves, 1 large loaf, 1 dozen muffins, or 2 dozen mini muffins.

I always double while I'm at it. Last time I made 4 mini loaves and I made strawberry blueberry muffins out of the other half of the batch. SO versatile!

Baked goods don't last too long in our house of hungry growing boys.

Ever Changing it Up,
The Lunch Lady