Vegan Banana Bread Revisited

Happy Tuesday Everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful long weekend and a fantastic Thanksgiving! My holiday was great, I spent it in the country with Sam's family. His aunt has a beautiful ranch about an hour south of us. We went home that night with a dozen fresh eggs from her chickens, some of her homemade green salsa, at least four pounds of potatoes and a ton of bananas that Sam's grandmother brought. Like, a lot of bananas.

I took this picture after I had already made several loaves of banana bread.

What better way is there to use up a bunch of overripe bananas than to perfect my banana bread recipe? So that is what my weekend consisted of mostly. I even tried making some vegan, gluten-free banana bread, but it just didn't come out right. I have the hardest time baking with coconut flour. I don't know what my problem is. 

Anyway. You may remember I posted my recipe for vegan banana bread back a few months ago. But I posted that from Colorado and the bread didn't rise correctly. Baking at high altitude is not fun. It's frustrating trying to figure out if the recipe is off because the measurements are off or if it's just because you're thousands of feet higher than you normally are. Hence the number of raw recipes I posted while living in Colorado (like this one, this one and this one). I knew my recipe for banana bread was good from the countless times I had made it down at sea-level, but I just didn't like having such flat looking bread in my pictures when I knew that wasn't a true representation of what the bread was like. My initial plan was just to update the photos on the post, but I figured while I had all the bananas I could hope for at my disposal, I might as well experiment a little and perfect the recipe.

After all my experimenting I was very encouraged to find that I really did have a great recipe and it really didn't need to be tweaked too much at all. So I basically ended up just recreating that same recipe, but with some of my new favorite ingredients and simplified it so it only takes one bowl. Less dishes to clean up afterwards is always a good thing.

Vegan Banana Bread

• 3 Large Overripe Bananas
• 1/4 Cup Unrefined Coconut Oil, Softened (melted is fine too)
• 2/3 Cup Coconut Sugar
• 1/3 Cup Unsweetened Almond Milk
• 1 Tablespoon Pure Vanilla Extract
• 2 Cups Whole Spelt Flour
• 2 Tablespoons Ground Flaxseeds
• 1 Teaspoon Sea Salt
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder

Makes 1 loaf.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, mash bananas with coconut oil; mix in sugar then the almond milk and vanilla. Add the flour, flaxseeds, salt, baking powder and baking soda to the bowl and mix until combined. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan. Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick can be inserted and removed cleanly and the top feels slightly firm. Allow to cool for 10 minutes. Serve and enjoy!

Notes:
-As always feel free to mix in whatever you feel like... chocolate chips, nuts, cinnamon, coffee, shredded coconut, berries....the list goes on...

-This recipe comes out fine without being too dry if you choose to leave out the coconut oil, but I highly suggest adding it. I can't remember what it is...baking soda? bananas? flax seed? something in this recipe mixed with coconut oil gives it a buttery flavor that shouldn't be missed. Plus, coconut oil is good for you :-)

How was your Thanksgiving?

What's your favorite "mix-in" for banana bread?

Oh! P.S.- I have a killer banana ice cream recipe coming your way soon. My other favorite way to use up overripe bananas!