Avocado Banana Bread

Banana bread ranks high on my list of favorite sweet breads along with pumpkin chocolate chip bread and zucchini bread. Recently, I’ve had an uncanny urge to bake banana bread. While I’ve eaten it plenty of times in the past, I don’t believe I have ever baked banana bread myself before.

Rather than bake a traditional banana bread, I decided to go the adventurous route and add avocados. The [healthy] fat from the avocado makes this bread rich and decadent. The banana completely masks the taste of the avocado, leaving you with a super soft and moist banana bread.

I even experimented with some whole grain flours, making this bread completely free of white flour. I used a combination of whole wheat pastry flour, spelt flour, and oat flour. To tell you the truth, it tasted as if it were made with white flour–no weird whole wheat taste whatsoever.

Because the avocado is high in fat, I only had to use 2 TBSP of coconut oil. I also added some ground flaxseed for a nutrient boost. I got my inspiration from this recipe for Chocolate Avocado Banana Bread, but I changed up the ingredients quite a bit.

Adaptations: This recipe can be adapted to be vegan, just use flax-eggs instead of eggs and replace honey with more sugar. The recipe can also be made with gluten-free flours i.e. brown rice flour, oat flour, etc.

Avocado Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• 2 med-large bananas
• 1 med-large avocado
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 TBSP coconut oil
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 1/4 cups of whole grain flour (I used 1/2 c whole wheat, 1 c oat, 3/4 c spelt)
• 1/3 cup ground flax seed

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350* F

1. Puree the avocado and bananas. If you like chunks of banana in your bread, set aside 1/2 banana and mash it)

2. Add the rest of the ingredients excluding the flour and ground flaxseed (sugar, honey, soda, powder, coconut oil, lemon juice, salt and beaten eggs).

3. In a separate bowl, combine flour and flax seed. Fold into the wet ingredients.

This is a new type of flour I got to experiment with, Spelt Flour. It worked incredibly well and I am looking forward to using it in future baking experiments.

4. Pour into a greased loaf pan (or whatever this is if you don’t have a loaf pan at school).

5. Bake at 350* F for 35-40 min. or until toothpick comes out clean.

(Looks like a giant doughnut!)

6. Slice and enjoy!

Tagged as: Avocado, Banana, Banana Bread, Coconut Oil, Eggs, Flax Seed, Oat Flour, Oats, Spelt Flour, Whole Wheat Flour