I’m FAT! Vegan Banana Bread – which is what you bake when someone is complaining about their weight

Slight aside. I’m not allowed to buy ice cream that he likes. I can only buy flavors that he doesn’t like or he will eat it. Which is fine as I have a fondness for mint chocolate chip (which he doesn’t care), mint cookies and cream (which again, he doesn’t care for) and honey lavender from our local ice creamery Bi-Rite (which he claims, tastes like soap, but I love). However if I ever buy Bi-Rite’s Salted Caramel ice cream, it’s gone in a day. So I don’t.

“I’m FAT!” Only one post into my blog, and I started to get self-conscious about what I’m going to bake next.

And then I’m at work. Digging around in the refrigerator, trying to find my Kombuchi (another thing I love but he hates. What does he have against sour pro-biotic slightly carbonated, possibly alcoholic health drinks?). And my eyes land on the browning bananas on the counter that will soon be composted.

That’s it. I know what I’m going bake next. Rescuing them from the compost bin, I decide that I will make some banana bread. But not just any banana bread…a healthy banana bread. Not that Banana Bread isn’t healthy (it’s made of bananas for goodness sake!). But I’m going to up the health factor in this one. And just for kicks, I’m going to make it vegan friendly too. Because vegan baking has always intrigued me. Sure, it’s easy to substitute for the butter (just use a trans-free butter substitute like Earth Balance’s “Buttery Stick” or better yet, use virgin unrefined Coconut Oil) but how to solve for eggs?

Luckily, banana bread is the easiest thing to make vegan. A lot of banana bread recipes don’t even call for eggs. And many vegan baked good recipes actually tell you use bananas as a substitute for eggs. Why? Because bananas are goopy enough to bind the ingredients together as you bake, something that eggs usually does.

So there you go. Vegan Banana Bread. Extra healthy with all whole wheat and some flax seed thrown in as well, for all those significant others that claim to be fat when they really aren’t.

Note: Whilst baking, I was listening to Aimee Mann’s Bachelor No. 2 album, and James Yuill’s Turning Down Water for Air. I contemplated listening to Ani Difranco but then thought it would be too much of a cliché to listen to the bisexual punk folk icon while baking a vegan banana bread. 

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Super Healthy, But Doesn’t Taste It Vegan Banana Bread*

1/4 cup vegan trans-free margarine (I used Earth Balance buttery stick)
1/4 cup coconut oil (room temperature)
1 1/3 cups dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup soy yogurt
1 tablespoon ground flax seed (flax meal)
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon all spice
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon five spice
4 medium RIPE bananas

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9 x 5 x 3 ½ loaf pan with canola oil spray.
2. Stir the ground flax seed into the soy yogurt. Set aside.
3. Whip the medium bananas in a mixer until pureed. Set aside.
4. Cream the margarine, coconut oil, and brown sugar together. Add vanilla and mix well. Beat in spices and salt.
5. Stir baking soda into the soy yogurt mixture. Immediately beat into the batter.
6. Beat in the vital wheat gluten to the batter, and then add the whole wheat flour and until just incorporated.
7. Add the whipped bananas and beat until well mixed.
8. Beat in the white whole wheat flour until it is just incorporated. Do not overmix.
9. Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake in the center of oven for 60-70 minutes or until a skewer/knife inserted in the middle of loaf comes out clean.

(Option. You can easily simplify the recipe list by using 3/4 cup whole wheat flour and 3/4 cup bread flour. Skip the vital wheat gluten, as there is more gluten in the bread flour. If you don’t have either, just use 1 1/2 cups all purpose. It just won’t taste as healthy.)

(Option 2. The flax seed probably isn’t super necessary, though it also acts as an egg substitute binder. However with four bananas, and the soy yogurt which itself is a binder, the flax seed is probably overkill. That said, I wanted to make this a healthy recipe as stated above, so I figure, why not add some flax seed?)

(Option 3. You can also skip the coconut oil and just 8 tbls (1 stick) vegan margarine or 8 tbls (1 stick) butter if you don’t care about the vegan part)

(Option 4. Yeah, I know it’s a lot of spices. You can simplify that as well and just throw in 1 tablespoon of cinnamon. The flax seed and the whole wheat flours really mask the spices so that’s why I had to up it. If you aren’t using the whole wheat or the flax seed I would adjust the cinnamon to 1 1/2 teaspoons instead.)

*The name comes from my not fat significant other who texted me after he ate it for breakfast. “It tastes very unhealthy! It’s very moist and breadlike (bananabreadlike)…without being oily!”