Healthy Oaty Banana Bread

We all know that oats are good for us, and so are bananas.  So what better excuse do you need to bake some of this lovely banana bread and put your feet up with a slice and cuppa?

Top tip: put overripe bananas in the freezer and keep them to use next time you make this recipe.

The difficulty with making banana bread is that the size of the bananas and how ripe they are can have a big impact on how moist the bread is. If the bread mix is too liquid it doesn’t cook fully and goes bad much quicker. To compensate for this I start with adding just 50ml of almond milk and if the mixture is stiff I add a bit more.

This banana bread is great as it is, but I usually can’t resist stirring in a few walnut pieces or some dried fruit before baking to make it even more delicious.

Note: Whilst oats themselves are gluten-free they are often grown next to fields growing other cereals containing gluten so some cross contamination is possible. If you are celiac or extremely sensitive to gluten, make sure to buy 100% gluten-free oats.

Ingredients

• 3 ripe bananas
• 3 medium eggs
• 5 tbsp of hard coconut oil (or 4tbsp of sunflower oil)
• 100ml (approx ½ cup) almond milk
• 200g (7oz) rolled oats
• 50g (2oz) finely ground almonds
• 40g (3tbsp) soft brown sugar  
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 50g (2oz) walnuts broken into bits (optional)
• 50g (2oz) sultanas (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 180C / 350F.

Grease a 1lb bread tin.  My tin has seen better days so I also line and grease the bottom and the long sides.

Break the bananas into pieces and blitz with the eggs, coconut oil and 50ml of almond milk in a food processor.

Weigh out the oats, almonds and sugar in a bowl and add the cinnamon, salt and baking powder. Mix well.

Add the dry oat mix to the banana mix and blitz in the food processor for a few more seconds until it is mixed together fully.

The mix should drop off a spoon easily, if it doesn’t then add in the other 50ml of almond milk and blitz again.

If using, stir in the sultanas and walnuts by hand.

Put mixture in the bread tin and bake for 45-50 minutes until it is brown on top.

Try and allow it to cool a bit before eating it all.  It stores fairly well in an airtight container for about 4 days (possibly longer but it tends to get eaten well before then in our house).