I was in need of something sweet and my bananas were starting to turn, so I decided not to let them go to waste. I made a chocolate chip banana bread adding ingredients as I went. It turns out that this spontaneous recipe is delicious. Even people that aren’t in the Gluten Free Club loved it. The loaf lasted two days in my house! No one believed it was gluten free and lactose free.
This moist rich bread is simple to make and doesn’t have a lot of clean up which I love. I just mixed everything in the same bowl and then lined my pan with tinfoil and I was ready to go. Just like the other recipes there will be a printable down at the bottom with just the ingredients and instructions for easy safe keeping.
Ingredients:
2 ripe bananas
1 cup of gluten free all purpose flour
1 tsp xantham gum
1/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of margarine (you can use coconut oil or butter)
1 egg
1 tbsp of milk (you can use almond milk, soy milk or even coconut milk)
1/4 tsp of vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 – 1 cup of chocolate chips
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp honey (or you could use maple syrup)
Now that we got the ingredients out of the way lets start baking!
First peel your ripest two bananas and place them in a nice big bowl so you have some room.
Ripe bananas are super soft so all you need to crush them is some elbow grease and a nice big fork.
Mash the bananas so you have a mush of banana, that way your bread won’t have surprise chunks through it.
Next I added the 1/4 cup of sugar and mixed that in so the sweetness would be throughout.
I mixed my lactose free margarine in next. You could add butter, normal margarine, coconut oil or anything you would like to use as your oil ingredient.
Next was the one egg. I decided to add the egg to help the bread hold together. I’m sure there are other substitutes to make this banana bread vegan.
Next I added the tsp of baking power and baking soda and mixed them in together.
I added 1/4 tsp of salt to help bring out the flavours.
You can’t beat the comforting smell of cinnamon so I added in 1/2 a tsp so it wasn’t over powering but there was still a hint of it in there.
I also added the 1/2 tsp of vanilla to bring out the flavours a bit making sure this bread wasn’t going to fall bland.
Next making sure that the bread would be fluffy I added the tsp of xantham gum.
To go with the xantham gum went the cup of all purpose flour. Again I used Bob Red Mills Gluten Free all purpose flour for this.
At this point I started stirring with a spatula to make sure I was getting everything mixed in and I wasn’t missing anything. Next was adding the tbsp of honey. I love how beautifully honey catches the light.
Next seeing the batter was getting a little thick I added a tbsp of lactose free milk to batter.
Now for the fun part! The chocolate chips. I used Enjoy Life mini chips. They are free of milk, peanuts, tree nuts and soy and obviously are gluten free. There are other chocolate chips that are gluten free you could use but, I wanted to make sure this was fully lactose free.
I measured out a cup of chocolate chips because well chocolate. You can use less if you want it to be less chocolatey. (Well it was a cup minus the ones I ate for quality control.)
I made sure to mix it nice and even so there weren’t going to be a lot of chocolate in some parts and non in others. This batter is starting to smell really good at this point.
For easy clean up I lined my bread pan with tin foil and it would also make sure the bread was easy to get out. This batter filled the pan about half way.
Next it was time to bake it. Depending on your oven you will want to bake it at 350 for 35-45 minutes. It came out of the oven darker than I expected but it wasn’t burned. The sugars and the banana gave it the dark complexion.
This bread came right out of the pan fluffy and grew to a little over the pan size.
Now for the taste test. I was blown away, as you can see all the chocolate chips are nicely melted and throughout the bread. This bread tasted more like a desert then something that is supposed to be healthy. This banana bread is super moist and addicting. I was so happy with the results that I just had to share it. Even now looking at the photos I’m dreaming of the next time I go to make it.
Until next time, happy eating.
