I have the pleasure of teaching 7 lovely women the art of baking and cooking gluten and dairy free in my new class at Boghill. Each week we will create an all purpose bread, suitable for sandwiches, toast, as a side with soup, salad, etc. A sweet treat and a vegetarian entree using non gluten grains rounds out the class. Many of the recipes I will use come from my book or this blog. But, it’s fun creating new ones and seeing how many versions of brown bread we can come up with!
For this weeks class the sweet treat is a banana bread that is not only gluten and dairy free but sugar free, as well, and it’s low fat. Banana breads are usually loaded with sugar and some form of shortening. My standard recipe has 1/2 cup oil or butter and 3/4 cup sugar or 1/2 cup honey. True, those ingredients keep the bread moist and it’s really good but you can have it without all the fat and sugar and it’s still delicious. Here’s how:
BANANA BREAD
Preheat oven to 180c or 350f. Grease and flour a bread tin. In a mixing bowl or food processor mix together 3 ripe bananas* with 1/2 cup pear apple spread or applesauce. Add 1/4 cup sunflower*. Beat in 2 eggs and 1 tsp. vanilla extract. Mix in 1 cup of brown rice flour or gf white bread flour mixand 1 cup buckwheat flour. Add 1 tsp. baking soda and 1/2 tsp. salt. Add dried fruit of choice: currants, raisins, dried cranberries add sweetmess. Spoon into bread tin, top with crushed walnuts or sunflower seeds and bake for 30 minutes or until tester comes out clean. Cool on wire rack. This is a good, healthy breakfast snack topped with soy cream cheese.
*When I have overipe bananas I freeze them whole and use them for bread. Just pop the bananas in the freezer and take out a few hours before baking. Open the skins and the banana and juices come right out. Use the juices for this recipe and in juicing, yum! Always use a good vegetable oil in baking. Enjoy!