Hearty Banana Nib Bread

Today, November 17th is "Homemade Bread Day" and if you live in either hemisphere it might be cool enough to think of making some bread. I love banana nut bread, I always have. However I live in a house with one man who is allergic to tree nuts and another who doesn't like nuts. The dislike thing I can deal with, if I'm the one shopping for the ingredients and making it, I'll make it as I like. The allergic thing is serious so I often end up making simply banana bread. That's okay but I want something heartier. So I came up with a recipe for Hearty Banana Nib Bread. Yup, you read that right, "nib," meaning that this uses cacao nibs to add a bit of nutty flavor but that isn't the end to this heartiness. Ingredients marked by * are those that companies sent to me in the past and have already been in their own featured articles.

Hearty Banana Nib Bread
by TammyJo Eckhart, PhD

Ingredients

4 very ripe bananas, peeled then cut into 1 inch pieces
3 T egg whites
1/2 C Vita Labs Cacao Nibs*
7 T Splenda Sugar Blend*
1/4 C unsweetened applesauce
1.5 C whole wheat flour
1/2 C old fashioned oats
1/2 T baking soda
1/2 T baking powder
pinch of salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 T skim milk + 1/2 tsp lime juice

Instructions

1. Move the rack of your oven into the center position then preheat oven to 350°F. Grease or use no-stick spray on the inside bottom and edges of a standard size bread loaf pan.

2. Beat together banana pieces, sugar blend, applesauce, egg whites, vanilla extract, milk, and lime juice. The wet mixture will still be slightly lumpy from the bananas that do not need to be liquefied for the best texture of the best. I use a stand alone electric mixer but use whatever you have.

3. Blend in flour, oats, baking soda, baking powder, and salt until all of the dry ingredient are wet and you cannot pick out any of them except the oat grains. Mix in the cacao nibs.

4. Pour the batter into your prepared loaf pan.

5. Place in the center of your oven for 52-60 minutes; mine only required 52 minutes. Check with a toothpick to make sure the bread is done; toothpick inserted into center of bread should come out dry.

6. Set loaf pan on its side on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Then dump bread out onto wire rack to finish cooling. In about an hour you should be able to cut the loaf into slices.

I cut this loaf into 12 slices then halved them so I had 24 slice. Each slice has 81 calories. If you use other ingredients such as cane or beet sugar and whole eggs, then you will have more calories.

So tell me. What homemade bread are you making today?