Gluten Free Banana Nut Bread

I’m on a GF kick.  Not because anyone in our house requires GF but because my best friend, who is, challenged me to make a good GF Banana Nut Bread.  And I love a good challenge. 

When I first started baking as a teen, I used to love making banana bread.  My only problem was that I could never get the bread to have the little brown flecks synonymous with banana bread.  Mine usually came out of the oven and white as snow.  It tasted great but most people would say it looked nothing like traditional banana bread.  It took me almost 10 years to finally get it with the flecks.  Now I have a great banana bread recipe but decided to tweak it with the request for gluten free.

I took out the butter and buttermilk and replaced with apple sauce and Greek yogurt. So if you take out the walnuts and chocolate chips, this truly would be a non-fat bread.  As it stands now it’s low fat! You could also use stevia or honey in place of the white sugar.

Recipe:

• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 very ripe bananas
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 cup non-fat Greek yogurt
• 2 cups GF flour (my fav is Cup 4 Cup)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Prepare two loaf pans and set aside.
3. In bowl of a stand mixer, combine all ingredients excluding walnuts and chocolate chips.
4. When just combined, remove paddle and fold in walnuts and chips.  If you mix too much, the bread gets a bit chewy.
5. Divide batter into two and bake for 30-40 minutes. Or until toothpick comes out clean.
6. Let stand 10 minutes and then remove from pan.
7. Cool.  Keeps wrapped for 4-5 days, or in freezer 3-4 weeks.
8. Enjoy!

This bread is fabulous! I gave one loaf to a friend who just had a baby and ate the other.  Yup all by myself.  Rob doesn’t like nuts baked into things plus he wasn’t here to complain about it :)

You could also use regular all-purpose flour but when Sapna gave me the challenge I was all over it!  So if you have a bakers challenge for me, I’m always up for it!

Thanks for looking!

A post with no name or reason! or Banana bread two ways with a Peony Tutorial!

I had a few bananas start to turn towards the dark side so I thought I’d try a few different recipes.  First one is banana pumpkin and the second is banana chocolate chip.  I know, not terribly off the charts exciting, so I also decided to play with gum paste flowers again!

The breads were delicious and the recipe will follow, I promise.  However, today I thought I’d show you how I made my peonies.  It’s way easier than you think!

So here we go:

You will need some gum paste coloured, peony cutter, ball and veining tool, ziploc bag, rice krispie treats, roller, forming mat and some shortening.

1. Roll the RKT’s into a 1” to 1 1/2” size ball.  I like to coat it with shortening to help the gum paste stick.

2.  Roll out some gum paste as thin as you can get it without ripping.  I like to rub shortening into my work surface to prevent the gum paste from sticking.  You can see the sheen :)

3. Cut out your petals. If you don’t have this cutter, you can also use a non-fluted 5-petal cutter.  Place the cut flower into a ziploc bag that you’ve slit down two sides so it opens like a book.  You can close it up so you can cut out more than one flower at a time.

4.  Now, I’ve tried both ways. You can either take the petals out to form/thin, or I like to keep them in the bag.  With the ball tool, push away from centre to elongate the petals.

5.  Take a small brush and brush water to outsides of petals.  This will help the gum paste stick to each other.  If you have too much water on the brush, just wipe with paper towel and your gum paste will get sticky.

6. Place RKT ball in centre of petals.  Fold two leaves over centre.

7. Use the vein tool to give the remaining three petals some texture.Wrap remaining petals around the ball and overlap the petals making sure you cover the seams.

8.  Take another 5-petal and continue to wrap all 5 petals. 

9.  You can keep adding until you get your desired size.  Make the petals tighter or looser.  It’s all about your favourite look.  Here are the orange ones with 3 layers.  They aren’t perfect but what flower is?

10.  You can also make the open look peony as well.  I just dried them in a small bowl lined with aluminum foil.  Dry them for at least 2-3 days because if they are still still soft, they will break so easy.  Always make a couple extras!

They didn’t quite dry before the cake was eaten :)  But they did turn out great!  As promised here is the bread recipe.  It was delish.  Rob took the cakes into work and said they didn’t last through lunch.

Banana Bread Recipe:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup pumpkin puree (1/4 cup butter)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (about 3 bananas)
• 1/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)

1. Mix pumpkin, eggs, sugar, vanilla and yogurt. 
2. Add in bananas
3. Add in dry ingredients.
4. Mix until combined.
5. Bake at 350 until toothpick comes clean.
6. Enjoy!

I iced it with some leftover vanilla bean butter cream and used this awesome technique from Melissa at MyCakeSchool.com 

Thanks for looking!