Vegan Banana Bread

 

This Banana Bread is so good and moist you would never know that it contains NO animal product.

I have had quite a few customers at the farmers market ask me for vegan baked goods and I have resisted this request because the perfectionist in me can not serve anything I wouldn't want to eat. And no offense to any Vegans out there, but I really have not liked most vegan baked goods.

Well I was so excited when I purchased the cook book from Babycakes . Babycakes is a vegan bakery in New York city. Although the recipes are good, they still had that slight after taste that I find with a lot of vegan baked goods.  So I used the animal substitutions (coconut oil for butter...) and incorporated it into other recipes I have.

So try it for yourself and I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised.

(I adapted this recipe from Babycakes cook book and from the Bread Bible cook book)

2 cups AP flour

2 teaspoons Baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 coconut oil 

2/3 cup Agave nectar

2/3 cup rice milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 bananas, mashed

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1 cup toasted walnuts, chopped.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease a 7 by 4 by 3 inch loaf pan with canola oil.

In a large bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients. Add the coconut oil, agave nectar, rice milk and vanilla. Mix until smooth. Add the mashed bananas and mix again until incorporated. Add the dried cranberries and toasted walnuts and mix until they are evenly distributed.

Place the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for about 30 to 40 minutes, rotating once, until golden brown and a tooth pick comes out clean when inserted.  Let rest for 20 minutes and remove from pan to cool. 

A few tips that I learned from Babycakes.  Melt the coconut oil before measuring it. And the use of coconut oil is a great substitution because of its high level of omega -3 fatty acids. It is stored in your body as energy and not fat. And the Agave nectar is a natural sweetener and it takes longer to absorb into the blood stream, so it doesn't shoot your blood sugar up the way refined sugars do.

Try this, and you will become a convert.

Enjoy!