Green Apple Clog Blog: Seriously SIMPLE Banana Bread...

Enz LOVES sweets! And he LOVES dessert every... single..... evening; sometimes with a coffee, sometimes with a cold glass of milk, but always with the sweets.

I hate baking! I'm not bad at baking, I've always had the knack for making sweets (my mama taught me well) but just like with cooking, I despise the mess of baking and especially of having to clean up afterward. Also, listening to Enz fuss and complain over his waistline doesn't exactly give me a whole lot of incentive to bake... but he complains more if there is nothing sweet to have after dinner and then will pick at anything and everything while grumbling all evening. Yes, it's about as fun as it sounds! He loves visiting my mom who used to be a professional cake decorator and loves to bake desserts and squares of every possible kind and will whip off seven large pans of different kinds of squares in an evening "...oh, just because they looked good....." I always feel bad that I am just not a fan of the sweet and will always opt for a potato chip over sugar if I'm going to make a bad snack decision but Enz always has enough baked sugaryness for the both of us! He is getting a little better, though and even though it may have started out that I was trying to trick his taste buds into believing in the sweet rather than actually needing the sweet... my plan to scale down on our sugar intake is finally working for the better and even Enz, himself, is now taking notice of the difference.

When I cut WAY down on sugar for myself about six years ago, it was a rough few weeks but once I was through the withdrawl I just could not take much sweetness, at all. Enz was a different story and the sugar he couldn't see in food and drinks just didn't matter enough to make him cut it out. I didn't want to make desserts every day but if there was nothing in the house for dessert, he would stop by the store bakery and come home with a pie, or a cake, or a box of doughnuts, or a couple of cookie tins, or a box of turnovers, or a coffee cake... or whatever else would deliciously catch his eye for dessert and that would also be delicious as his preferred style of breakfast the following morning. Needless to say, it became a real friction point between us with Enz always bringing home sweets and me continually asking him to stop. Until I decided that baking, unfortunately, would become our answer...

So I started trying new and healthier ways to bake the things that Enz loves and he was always just so happy to have a low-carb/low-sugar cheesecake, or a low-sugar apple pie, or a low-sugar/low-fat blueberry scone, or a low-carb fruit crumble that he didn't even notice I had healthyfied the sweets which was a big YAY for us both. But I still hate baking, I just you to know it! Anyhow, one of Enz's absolute favourites has always been banana bread so I knew if I changed it up too much he would, without a doubt, notice that one so I thought honesty would be my best bet even before he tasted my new recipe. "I made it differently this time..." I started as he was beginning to slice into the barely cooled loaf. "Looks good to me!" And he followed up the first slice with two more before dinner, so all worked out well, whew!

Banana breads are usually all about sugar and fat with banana in the title to make it sound healthy. This one that I now make (and actually wrote down the ingredient measures to help me remember) does still have sugar and oil in it BUT nowhere near as much as I used to use... and it still turns out perfect every time! So, if you are like us and trying to cut down on sugars and fats without giving up sweets completely, just try changing up the way you bake things. Or, if you hate to bake like me, resolve to make the chore easier by creating one-bowl-wonders like I do... no mixing separately, sifting and adding, just dump stuff together and go. And believe me, I know that we are NEVER allowed to mess with baking ingredients because baking is finicky... I've heard it a million times, too. But since I've gone baking rogue, not once have the baking police showed up at my door and not once have I had a baking attempt fail. So don't be afraid to make healthier happen, even in just smaller ways.

And so finally... if you would like to try making a super simple banana bread, I hope you will enjoy it as much as we do for a sweet treat! It freezes well so I always have a loaf or two in the freezer for when the sweet need hits if there isn't anything else prepared when Enz starts looking.

Banana Bread  (makes 2 loaves)

Ingredients:

4   Bananas (overripe)
4 lg    Eggs
1 cup   Sugar
1/3 cup   Vegetable Oil

2 1/2 cups  Flour (all purpose)
2    tsp    Baking Soda

3/4 cup Pecans or Walnuts (if desired)

Step one:

Combine bananas, eggs, sugar and oil in a large mixing bowl and mix well.

Step two:

Add flour and baking soda to above mixture and beat well to a thick batter.

Step three:

Blend in nuts if using.

Step four:

Pour batter evenly into prepared loaf pans.

* I made two batches (back-to-back to avoid washing the bowl an extra time) so I would have loaves without nuts for my mom and sister and two loaves with nuts for Enz and I to have in the freezer. *