I don’t follow a strict paleo diet by any means, but I usually try to limit the amount of carbs and sugar that I have. (Don’t ask me to do that when there is a banoffee pie in proximity though. It’s a new found love that I will share next week!)
Paleo diets are also known as the caveman diet and follows what a Paleolithic human would have eaten or had access to back in the day. Like I said, I just try to limit the carbs and refined sugars. In an effort to do so, I try some recipes out and this is a banana bread that uses coconut flour which I’m not sure cavemen would have had? It IS a low sugar and low fat version of banana bread though and I thought tasted decently.
I followed a recipe on Pinterest from southerninlaw.com
“The BEST Healthy Paleo Banana Bread Recipe”
1 cup + 1 tbsp (2 medium bananas) ripe mashed banana
2 1/2 tbsp honey
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 1/2 tbsp butter or coconut oil, melted (I used butter cause I had it in the fridge)
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
4 eggs
1/2 cup coconut flour (The writer of the recipe recommends this one for the best results!)
1/2 cup almond meal
3/4 tsp baking soda
I followed the recipe pretty closely.
Preheat oven to 340F.
Grease and line a small loaf tin and set aside. I greased my Pyrex loaf dish (that I picked up at a thrift store for $.70! Can you tell I’m proud of that frugal find?) with butter.
In a medium mixing bowl, mash your bananas:
and add in your honey, vanilla, melted butter/coconut oil, applesauce and eggs.
Mix in your coconut flour, baking soda and almond meal and allow to sit for two minutes.
She says the mix will be runny, more like a pancake batter mix. Mine was already on the thick side so my coconut flour was pretty absorbing. If your batter is too runny, she says to add a spoon of coconut flour slowly until it’s the right consistency. You’ll want to make sure you let it sit each time to see how the coconut flour is absorbing.
Once you get your banana bread to what you think is the right consistency, pour it into that greased loaf pan and bake for approximately 40 mins.
Mine wasn’t baking in the middle, so I got creative on the bake. I knew I was going to cut into slices, so I sliced it and removed each end of slices. I put it back in the oven to bake the rest a bit longer and it seemed to do the trick and not overbake the ends.
The writer suggests – If your banana bread is browning too quickly but isn’t cooked in the middle, cover it with foil. She also says to allow to cool completely before slicing. Oops! I didn’t do that for sure. I sliced right out of the oven to remove some of the bread (and ate it!)
Its suggested that you can keep the bread in a sealed container in your refrigerator up to a week or freeze individual slices. Or…you can take it to work, like I did, and watch it disappear in 2 days. I wasn’t sure that others would like it and I warned everyone that it wasn’t normal banana bread so don’t expect a strong sugary flavor. It was eaten, so I think they didn’t mind it?
Feel free to try it and let me know if you had any other variations. I’m thinking of trying a zucchini bread next and hoping it’s not going to taste like a salad. Here’s hoping!
