Banana Banana Bread

Gluten Free Banana Banana Bread from allrecipes 

I read all the time. I am one of those people that goes to the library multiple times a week and checks out a stack of books. Part of the reason is that I read very fast. My mother taught me this trait and it only takes me a couple of days to finish a book. It was also my mother who instilled the love of reading in me. Growing up she read every night on the couch. While my dad and I watched television, my mother read, and read, and read. She barely graduated high-school, but had read more and had a larger vocabulary than most of the people I went to college with. When I was in middle school my mother decided that she wanted me to read all the classics. So she started bribing me. She started the bribes as a joke, she bet me 20 dollars that I couldn't finish War and Peace. War and Peace is a very long, very boring book. When I came to my mother 2 months later and told her I finished it she was skeptical, so much so that she decided to make a list of questions to quiz me about the book. I passed with flying colors and started reading Anna Karenina (another very long slightly less horrible book-sorry can't take Russian Lit). By the time I started high-school I was already finished with the entire high-school reading list. I went on to major in English Lit as an undergrad thanks a great deal to my mother. To this day there are few things as relaxing to me as being fully lost in a great book.

Since I have two boys in a growth spurt I have been baking and cooking up a storm in the last couple of weeks. I love sweet foods, but I also like to limit the amount of fat and sugar that my family consumes. This week I made a new recipe for Banana Banana Bread from the new Allrecipes magazine.

This recipe has 7 ingredients. It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes of total time, 15 minutes of which is active and makes 12 servings. I did make a number of major changes to the original recipe. First since I eat gluten free I substituted rice flour for the all-purpose flour. Since I have been trying to reduce the amount of fat in my kids diet I substituted 1/2 cup of Greek yogurt for the butter called for in the recipe. This helped to reduce the fat and increase protein since the yogurt I used had 12 grams of protein per 1/2 cup. Finally, I made this recipe two ways, the first time with the full amount of sugar and the second time with half sugar and half sugar substitute. Both ways baked up similar and my kids liked both versions. The reduced sugar version was nice since it was less sweet and made perfect toast.

I really liked that this banana bread worked well after all my changes. The bread rose beautifully and had a lot of banana flavor. The reduced sugar version worked very well toasted with butter or peanut butter for a quick breakfast. My kids didn't notice that I substituted Greek yogurt for the butter and I liked that it reduced the fat and increased the protein. A versatile recipe.

For the recipe go to Banana Banana Bread.