Virtually No Fat Banana Bread

                              

                             
May was such a crazy month, I feel like I've barely had time to post anything.  My daughter graduated from college up in Boston.  All of us attended and spent a wonderful weekend together as a family.  Then back to St. Louis, just in time to have carpet replaced in our home.  It was exhausting work especially since I had to clean out some of the closets, mine in particular, which was stacked with cookbooks, and culinary magazines.  I hate throwing those away but many were pitched. 

My new resolution is to order those that I read frequently online and delivered to my inbox, where I can view the magazine on my PC or iPad.  It's a great way to eliminate stacks of magazines.  Instead places like Zinio store them by date and even provide a yearly index.  I hopeful that this will resolve my hoarding of culinary magazines.

My last post was a week ago Friday where I created a Feijoas Curd Trifle using homemade Virtually No Fat Banana Bread, a recipe I created many years ago.  I mentioned there, that I'd share the recipe in my next post.  I usually call this fat free banana bread but actually bananas have approximately 1 gram of fat along with a host of health benefits and eggs have some fat too.  So I decided a better name would be Virtually No Fat Banana Bread.  Wouldn't you agree?

You may remember that my family insists on fat free everything even though I tell them it's not always the best option.  With that in mind I modified my old favorite banana bread recipe to be figure friendly - it's so moist and delicious!  Honestly, no one would ever know it's virtually fat free.  Although there's sugar in it, I've reduced the amount initially used, by half.   I'm sure you could substitute agave nectar (using 1/2 the amount of the sugar) or honey, although I've never tried it with this particular recipe.

Once you make my Banana Bread, I know it will become one of your favorites.

Virtually No Fat Banana Bread
makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

1/2 cup applesauce (I used Musselmans Natural Unsweetened)

3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 (6oz) container fat free Vanilla yogurt (I used Dannon)
3 very ripe bananas, mashed (the skins on mine were black - best flavor when very ripe)

Cream applesauce and sugar; add eggs and salt and mix well. Add flour, soda and yogurt and mix well. Add bananas blending well into the mixture.

Note: At this time if you wanted to add any chocolate chips or nuts you can blending well.

Grease or spray with non-stick cooking spray one regular size loaf pan; pour mixture into pan and bake in a preheated 350F degree oven for approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour. When the bread pulls away from the sides of the pan and toothpick comes out clean, the bread is done.  If top of bread starts getting too brown place foil over top. 

This recipe can be doubled.

If you want to use plain yogurt or some other flavor then feel free to do so. The best part about cooking yourself is that you can modify a recipe anyway you like.

Enjoy!