In Search of the Perfect Banana Bread Recipe

Last year I was on a big banana kick. Bananas in smoothies, bananas in yogurt, bananas by themselves, even banana babies. One week I let the bananas get too ripe and I made banana bread...and I loved it. From then on the only reason I bought bananas was to make banana bread. I tried a few things to make a little lower cal, like applesauce instead of some of the fat. 

One week I went to make my banana bread and discovered that I had run out of eggs. Instead of getting in my car and buying eggs, or going to a neighbor to borrow some, I just googled "eggless applesauce banana bread" (don't you love that you can just throw a bunch of random ingredients and what you want to make into a search bar and find a perfect recipe?). I discovered this fabulous recipe. It became my go-to recipe for a few months. Then I got a boyfriend and gained a little weight so I went in search of a way to lower the calories in this tasty treat (other than the obvious remove the nuts and the chocolate chips).

Today was my first adventure in altering recipes myself. I started small but I have big ideas for the next round. But here goes for what I tried today. I looked at what items were the highest calorie and tried to cut back

Original Recipe (8 servings, 262 calories per serving):

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
3 large ripe bananas
1/2 cup applesauce
4 tablespoons butter or 4 tablespoons margarine, melted
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Highest calorie items in here are (other than the chocolate chips and walnuts) the flour, sugar, and butter. 

To start I cut out 3 tablespoons of butter (looking back, I could probably cut out all of it) and added an extra tablespoon of applesauce in case I needed a little extra moisture.

Next I replaced the 3/4 cup all-purpose flour with 1/2 oats. I blended up most of them to get more of a flour texture but left some whole too (I can't give you exact measurements for this part because I made a triple batch...).

Finally, I tried Domino Light sugar and Stevia blend because I'm a dope and bought the wrong stuff at the grocery store, I wanted to straight 0 calorie Stevia stuff.

I'm a crappy blogger and failed to take a lot of pictures in the process but here's what I did take:

Pan 1 had a little stevia/cinnamon blend on top 

Pan 2/3 had a little bit of pecans on top with the stevia/cinnamon blend

The boy likes the crunch of the nuts and they add a little healthy fat to the mix without too too many calories but I prefer to have the option to add a little chocolate to my bread so I made a plain pan.

Today's recipe was:

1/2 cup oats

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3/8 cup Light Sugar & Stevia Blend

3 large ripe bananas

1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp Natural Applesauce

1 tablespoons butter

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon Cinnamon, Ground

Overall, this recipe comes out to 150 calories per serving (8 servings)

Pan 1 post baking

Pan 2 post baking

What is looks like out of the pan

Overall, it has a little more of a cake consistency that the original recipe (the other recipe was really moist and we could never get it to bake all the way through without leaving a little big of a pudding texture in the middle). I think my next round will be all stevia, all oats, and no butter. But I'll take 150 calories a serving for now, and the little stevia/cinnamon mixture on top adds a little sweetness so I don't even need chocolate! I can pair this with some sausages and a yogurt and have the perfect breakfast!

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