January 21, 2016

Image by Slim Palate

Our household tends to have a few extra brown bananas this time of year thanks to those warm summer afternoons. I used to keep those bananas in the freezer to make my mum's banana bread recipe but unfortunately my stomach can no longer tolerate her yum bread. Over the past few months I've been working with a great local nutritionist to get down to the root of my health issues. Turns out that my body just cannot process most gluten and dairy products.

Queue Slim Palates (found via Pinterest) amazing gluten and dairy free banana bread recipe. I've always been a bit skeptical of gluten and dairy free baking recipes as they can tend to be quite dense and flavourless - not this one!

This banana bread recipe tastes just like the real deal and best of all - doesn't cause me any discomfort - win win. Below is my version of Slim Palate's recipe but you can see his original version here.

INGREDIENTS

½ cup coconut flour
½ cup almond meal
1 cup very ripe banana mashed well with a fork (3 defrosted medium bananas)
½ cup coconut oil (melted)
¼ cup cacao nibs
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cake spice mix
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¼ cup honey
4 eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat the oven to 175C degrees.
In a medium sized bowl combine the coconut flour, almond flour, cinnamon, baking soda, cacao nibs, and pinch of salt and mix with a fork to reduce any clumps until thoroughly combined.
In a small bowl add eggs, vanilla extract, honey and whisk then add mashed banana to the egg mixture and whisk more until well combined.
Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry and stir with a spoon until thoroughly combined then add melted butter and continue stirring until well incorporated.
Spoon all of the bater in your greased loaf pan and spread it out evenly with a scraper and shape it in any way you want (specifically in the shape of a loaf so that it rises like that)
Place in the oven for 40-45 minutes or until the center is pierced with a toothpick and the toothpick comes out clean.
Pull out of the oven and let it cool slightly (only for a minute or so) then carefully run a knife along the edges to make sure nothing is sticking and cautiously invert it onto your hand or a wire rack and flip it so the bottom is laying flat on the wire rack and let it cool for 20-30 minutes. (if you can wait that long)