SRC: Jeanette’s Healthy Living Gluten-Free Pumpkin Spice Banana Bread

For October’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Jeanette of Jeanette’s Healthy Living. Jeanette is a mother of four boys and loves to create healthy, tasty and delicious looking recipes that her kids actually want to eat.  Her youngest son has allergies to gluten and dairy, so all of her recent-er recipes are gluten and dairy free, which made this allergy conscious girl very happy! She has TONS of beautiful food – Soups – I bought Soba noodles to try after looking through her blog, Gluten and Dairy free recipes, including this Pumpkin Coffee Cake and Chocolate Marble Coffee Cake.

After spending at least 6 hours (I am not kidding) looking through her blog and being indecisive, I ended up choosing her Gluten-Free Pumpkin Spice Banana Bread and it did not dissapoint!

I did make a few changes to this loaf. Sometimes I’m a genius and assume something is a certain way based on what I want to see  (Does that ever happen to you?) and this loaf was the same. I read the recipe and was super excited to find a loaf that had both bananas and pumpkin, so I went and bought some pumpkin. Then when I was making the loaf, I re-read the ingredients list and it was “pumpkin spice” not pumpkin. (I had been confused as to why Jeanette said that she had substituted the spice for cinnamon as I assumed that all pumpkin loafs would have Pumpkin-y spices in them, not just cinnamon – way to go for reading things thoroughly.)

Being very stubborn, I decided to add pumpkin to the mix as I went and bought pumpkin specifically for this purpose. So, I added 1/2 c. of pumpkin puree in addition to the bananas. I also added some chopped up dairy-free dark chocolate (from a bar – way better than chips, in my opinion) and reduced the sugar by a couple tablespoons.

In the past, I’ve had issues baking with almond flour and bananas without eggs, so I was quite surprised to find a recipe with that criteria. Since there were other flours in the mix (it’s only half almond flour), it did work better than I expected it to, but I increased the cooking time to 55 minutes and it was still quite soft (I could have cooked it for another 5-10 minutes and it probably would have helped). I had a difficult time cutting the loaf (hence the ragged looking pieces), so to cut up the rest of the loaf, I stuck it in the freezer for an hour and it worked like a charm.

I took this loaf to a Halloween party and everyone loved it (it disappeared very quickly). It’s not too sweet, has a great depth of flavour thanks to the molasses and coconut palm sugar and is super moist and soft. I definitely recommend making this as it’s delicious! I almost didn’t want to take it to the party as it was so good – my waistline thanks me.

Please go and check out all the other recipes from group D by clicking the link below!

Friday Fun

The last few weeks have been quite hectic around the Bean Household, so I haven’t had as much time online as I usually do. So, I thought I would share some of the more exciting things that I have been up to:

1. I’m working with JennyO on a collaborative self portrait over the last week or so. I am really excited for how it’s coming together. Stay tuned!
2. I’m now tutoring three people instead of one. It’s a good thing that I like math and science!
3. The weather has gotten nice enough for me to start riding my bike and everything is starting to turn green. Both things make me incredibly happy.
4. My photography courses are over until I may start some in the fall. I loved going to them, but I also like having an evening back to hang out with Mr. Bean.
5. I decided to participate in this week’s “Foto Friday” challenge with the prompt “Old.” This photo is from our trip to Europe last spring of a monastery ruin that was originally built in the 1400s. I consider that to be quite old!
   
6. I made bread again today. There’s nothing quite like fresh bread. Yum.
7. Remember these cake pops? Well, I won second place in the challenge and received a copy of “Everyday Raw” by Matthew Kenney. It’s my kind of cookbook – lots of colour, smooth pages, easy to read and lots of pictures. Seriously, everything looks so delicious. Thank you Nicole and Lisa!
8. Mr. Bean and I booked our flights out to Vancouver Island for this summer. I am really looking forward to it!
9. I feel like I’ve realized something really important in my counselling, which is good. Now just to deal with it.
10. I really like this song:
    
    It’s true. We’re more than our past mistakes. God loves us. We’ve been remade.

What is the most exciting thing that happened to you in the last week or so?

Happy Pi Day!

I realized at 4pm today that it was pi day today and that I hadn’t made any pie. Mr. Bean has always been on my case to make a banana cream pie, but I’ve always refused as all I could think about what the banana petroleum products “cream” pie that they use to pie people at engineering school. Not exactly the best example of a good tasting pie.

In Cybele Pascal’s Allergen-Free Baker’s Handbook, there is a recipe for gluten, dairy, egg and soy free banana cream pie, so I thought that I might as well give it a go. I wanted to try a pie crust that didn’t require rolling and didn’t send the blood sugar soaring, so I thought I would try Elana’s Coconut Pie Crust from her Almond Flour Cookbook. Ironically, I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed for either recipe despite a trip to the grocery store, so I improvised and changed things up a bit. This may not be the absolute healthiest banana cream pie you’ve had, but it’s pretty darn close in my opinion.

The custard/cream is tasty but the texture is a bit different. I think it’s because I used tapioca starch instead of cornstarch. Use cornstarch! I’ve used cornstarch in pumpkin pies before and it worked well.

Banana Coconut Cream Pie

Coconut Almond Pie Crust

3/4 c. almond flour
1/4 c. shredded coconut, toasted
1/2 c. coconut flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 c. coconut oil, melted over low heat
1 tbsp. agave nectar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Mix together flours, coconut, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. Whisk together coconut oil, agave nectar and vanilla extract.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until combined.
5. Press into a 9″ pie pan.
6. Bake in oven for 7 – 10 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Let it cool completely on a cooling rack before filling.

Banana Coconut “Cream” Pie Filling

21 oz. coconut milk (about 1 1/3 cans – make sure you shake before you measure!)
1/4 c. + 3 tbsp. agave nectar, divided
1/4 c. + 2 tsp. corn starch (I used tapioca starch and it didn’t work as well as I would have hoped.)
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 egg replacer (1 1/2 tsp. egg replacer whisked in 2 tbsp. rice milk until frothy and no lumps remain)
3 – 4 ripe bananas, sliced thinly
Yellow food colouring (optional)

1. Measure out 1/3 c. coconut milk and set aside. Heat the rest of the coconut milk with the 1/4 c. agave nectar in a saucepan over medium heat until bubble form on the sides of the pot. Remove from the heat.
2. Whisk together set aside coconut milk, 3 tbsp. agave nectar, cornstarch, salt, vanilla and egg replacer. Pour into coconut milk mixture and stir to combine.
3. Heat the mixture on medium heat until it starts to simmer, stirring constantly. Let it simmer for about 4 minutes or until it is thickened.
4. Spread a small amount of the custard on the bottom of the pie crust. Lay one layer of bananas down.
5. Pour about half the remaining custard over the bananas and spread evenly over bananas. Lay another layer of bananas down.
6. Pour the remaining custard over the bananas and smooth the top.
7. Let the pie cool until room temperature and then refrigerate until ready to serve. Make sure it’s cold before you cut so that doesn’t flomp like mine did!
8. Enjoy!

What’s your favourite kind of pie?

Linked up to: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Hearth and Soul Hop-Volume 39, Gluten Free Wednesdays and Seasonal Sundays.

Vegan GF Strawberry Banana Loaf with Walnuts

You’ll probably think I’m crazy for saying this, but I ate meat for the first time in three weeks last night for dinner and it was glorious. Mr. Bean spoiled me and made me spaghetti and meatballs for dinner – unsurprisingly, I ate way too much. Who would have thought that I would be so keen about meat?

After sitting around for a while, I decided at 8:30 yesterday evening that I wanted to bake something – three weeks is a long time for someone who loves to bake! Given that I’m not yet eating eggs, dairy, chocolate and refined sugar, I was uncertain of what I should make and it took me a really long time to decide. Since we had a bunch of bananas in the freezer and baking with bananas generally means less sugar, I decided to make banana loaf. However, our bigger loaf pan was dirty and me being lazy didn’t feel like cleaning it (everyone has those moments), so I decided to make it in a cake pan. I’m such a rebel.

This loaf/cake is fairly dense and quite filling, yet delicious! It was a perfect coming home after a workout snack.

Strawberry Banana Loaf with Walnuts

1 c. brown rice flour
1/3 c. potato starch
1/2 c. sorghum flour
2 tbsp. quinoa flour
1 tsp. xathan gum
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
Pinch salt
5 tbsp. coconut oil
4 tbsp. coconut palm sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. lemon juice
Egg replacer for one egg made with dairy free milk
4 – 5 ripe bananas, mashed
2/3 c. chopped walnuts
2/3 – 1 c. chopped strawberries (if frozen, thaw and drain)
2 – 4 tbsp. rice milk

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line large loaf pan or 9″ cake pan with parchment paper.
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.
3. Cream coconut oil and coconut palm sugar together.
4. Add egg replacer, mashed bananas, vanilla extract and lemon juice. Mix until combined. Note: If you’re using frozen bananas like I did, make sure the bananas are room temperature or else the coconut oil will harden up upon contact. You can warm it up by putting it in the warming oven in 1 minute increments. Give it a stir and repeat until there are no longer chunks of solid coconut oil in your batter. Be careful and use oven mitts as the bowl is hot! Me in my amazingness forgot and I have a lovely burn on my hand to show for it!
5. Mix in flour and rice milk until mostly combined. Then add strawberries and walnuts and mix until combined and evenly distributed throughout the batter. Add more rice milk if your batter is too thick.
6. Scrape batter into prepared pan.
7. Cook for 45+ minutes for a cake pan and 1+ hour for a loaf or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Since there are no eggs, it takes a long time to cook, so make sure that you poke around in few places!
8. Cool on a wire rack.
9. Enjoy!

If you hadn’t baked for a long time, what is the first thing you would make?

Recipe shared in: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Gluten Free Wednesdays and Real Food Wednesdays.

Tasty Gluten and Dairy Free Banana Bread

I love banana bread and most other baking with bananas.  When I realized the other day that I have never posted a banana bread recipe, I knew that had to be remedied. A few months ago someone asked me for an easy gluten free loaf recipe (and I forgot to give one to them – oops!), so now I have one that is super easy and very delicious! I managed to eat an embarrassingly large percentage of it, so I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I did!

Gluten and Dairy Free Banana Bread

1 1/3 c. brown rice flour
1/3 c. tapioca starch
1/3 c. sorghum flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. xathan gum
1/2 c. dairy free margarine
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
2 eggs
4 -5 ripe bananas

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Grease and flour a 9×5″ loaf pan.
3. Mash up bananas. Set aside.
4. In a medium sized bowl, combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt and xathan gum. Set aside.
5. In a larger bowl, cream together margarine and brown sugar.
6. Mix in the eggs and mashed bananas until well blended.
7. Add flour to banana mixture and stir until just moistened.
8. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake 55 – 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the loaf comes out clean. It’s a good idea to check more than one spot as you may hit a banana chunk and think the loaf is underdone, when it actually isn’t.
9. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes and turn out on wire rack to complete cooling.
10. Enjoy!

I know this recipe calls for a lot of bananas. In my opinion, the more bananas you use, the better it is!

What is your favourite banana baked good?