I’ve dabbled in the antics of making banana bread a few times previously and they’ve turned out okay, but never anything to write home about. Although you will find a pretty large selection of desserts on my blog, baking isn’t actually one of my strong points, so I usually stick to desserts of the raw variety. So naturally, I’m always slightly apprehensive of how my baking creations are going to turn out when they emerge from the oven. I picked up these miniature loaf cases the other day, as I just thought they looked really cute and simply couldn’t resist adding them into my shopping basket! I felt banana bread was the obvious choice here and I had some lovely ripe bananas that needed using up, so decided to give this whole banana bread thing another shot. I’m pleased to inform you that finally, I think I’ve mastered it and am actually pretty happy with this recipe. Yay!
Although it’s pretty simple, I think banana bread can be quite a tricky one to get just right as you want it to be sweet, but not too sweet.. firm enough to slice, but not too dry.. and still a little moist, but not soggy and undercooked. It also depends on how you like your banana bread I guess. This is slightly different from the traditional kind, as it’s refined sugar free and is made with coconut oil and oat flour, as opposed to butter and wheat flour. I try and limit the amount of gluten in my diet, so using oat flour in baking is a great way for me to still be able to enjoy delicious treats that taste just as good as the real thing (well, I think so anyway.) Also, you can actually pretty easily make your own oat flour too by grinding oats in a food processor- make sure you use gluten free oats to make the bread gluten free.
The second and perhaps the best part to this recipe: is the delicious honey and almond drizzle that is draped over the banana bread like a gooey, silky smooth layer of dreams. All of the sweet, nutty goodness just soaks into the bread and tastes incredible! You could also use it to spread on toast, rice cakes.. or just eat it on it’s own. It really is so yummy, just thinking about it now is making me hungry! AND, it’s made from only THREE ingredients (well, 4 if you count the optional cinnamon) .. does it really get much better than that? I don’t think so.
This makes the perfect snack to accompany a good ol’ cup of afternoon tea or delicious dessert option. I also think that they’d be amazing to serve to friends at a summer picnic, especially now the weathers starting to warm up slightly! Yes, they are a little bit of a treat; but what I love about these is that a lot of the sweetness comes naturally from the bananas. I love using mashed banana in baking, because not only does it mean that I don’t need to use as much sugar, but it can also act as a replacement from butter, as it provides moisture in the cake. I’m thinking that there might be quite a few more baking occurrences on the blog appearing in the near future now that my confidence is growing, so you can expect to see a few more creations soon!
