aureate & aromatic

Happy Sunday!

Figured I’d try sharing a recipe I tested out this week for the first time: a healthy-ish dark chocolate banana bread recipe. It could’ve been a tad softer, but considering I demolished half of the loaf already, I’d say it was a success!

I’ve made my fair share of regular banana bread and it’s pretty much a staple in our home. I thought I’d try tweaking my existing recipe that uses butter, regular flour, and eggs to see if it’s possible to create an equally delicious but gluten-free and vegan version: no butter, no dairy, no eggs!

The ingredients needed are as follows:

• 3 ripe bananas
• 2 tsp vanilla paste
• 1/3 & 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups gluten-free flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
• 1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
• Some walnuts

The instructions are pretty simple. Start with mashing the bananas in your bowl with a fork.

Add the vanilla, sugar, and oil and mix until well combined.

Then add all of the dry ingredients and mix together. Since there is no gluten in the flour, no need to worry about over-mixing. Fair warning, the dough is quite thick, but I decided to just trust the process.

The nuts and chocolate are optional, but I figured since we’re omitting so many ingredients that make the bread delicious usually, a little flavor and texture couldn’t hurt.

Below is a series of photos of the process labeled with the steps to show how it should look.

First impressions upon taking a bite fresh out of the oven: it tastes like banana bread! I can exhale a sigh of relief.

I’d give the overall result a 4/5, which I feel is fair considering it came out much better than I expected.

Going forward, I think I’ll adjust the ratios until the dough itself looks more familiar. Since I haven’t cooked with gluten free flour before I wasn’t sure if I needed to increase or reduce the oil or other ingredients, and I think with the final texture some tinkering is needed.

So I’ll either bump up the oil or add some milk to bring some moisture back into the final product, but overall I’m pretty satisfied and would make this again as is – especially since I didn’t feel that bad eating as much of it as I did, haha. Despite the toppings on top, the bread itself wasn’t extremely sweet, and that’s because most of my baking involves reduced sugar simply because of personal preference.

If anyone gives this a try, or has any tips or tricks for gluten-free and vegan baking, I’m all ears!

~ C.C.