Basic Banana Bread

Vegan Banana Bread

Please tell me someone who hasn’t had a slice of banana bread in their life? My guess is more than half of you had it because it is so easy yet so delicious and full of flavor, ripe bananas have the specific amount of sugar for us to love them this much. This recipe is inspired by my mom who almost every week had a banana bread in the oven for us; also, I did purposely buy some extra bananas for them to ripe longer than normal, what’s not normal is that it was gone within a couple of hours! well to be fare I did share with neighbors and they loved it!

All my life I’ve been an athlete (well up until 3 years ago), my mom decided there was no chance we will go home and watch tv after school so she kept us busy in the conservatory (I played the violin and piano) and swimming, we each (my brother and I) eventually chose one and had my mom as the best chofer and chef I’ve ever met, she used to take our lunch at the end of school day so we can eat it in the car nice and warm and then she’d drive us to classes, oh that was also when I had vocal lessons! Anyway, back to my mom’s superman acts then she’d wait for us to be done with those classes to then drop us off at the pool and then we were home around 5pm to do homework and homework in south American schools are the real deal, it’s no one sheet and fill out numbers and letters, math is full of fun algebra exercises and accounting also full of numbers. Back to the cake right? she always had one because she loved to bake and my guess is it was somehow relaxing for her considering she had to deal with 2 teenagers, we ate it most of the time until we both hit that age were one is worried about our skin breaking out and weight and then we ere no fun and games anymore (sorry mom!) we still ate them just not as quick.

Funny enough this is the first time I have baked a banana bread since I came back to the States for school almost 10 years ago (wow! it sounds a little unreal), I can’t believe it took me this long to bake such easy cake; originally my mom would add chopped walnuts and my brother and I would fight for them (haha!), for this bundle of sweetness I am sharing today I gave it a little kick with raw sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds instead go ahead and give it a try, it will have you slicing one after another. Bon appetite!

Basic Banana Bread

Vegan

Makes: 8 servings

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 58 mins

Ingredients:

• 1 ¾ cup flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp brown sugar, packed
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp banana puree
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup almond butter
• 1/4 cup _ 2 Tbsp maple syrup, room temperature
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• 1 ½ Tbsp raw sesame seeds, white or black
• 2 Tbsp raw pumpkin seeds, save 1 tbsp for topping

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven at 350F and prepare a loaf pan (mine is 4.5” by 8.5”), butter and place parchment paper for pullout. Let milk and vinegar curdle for a few minutes
2. In a bowl with an electric mixer, mix all wet ingredients until completely mixed; add brown sugar and mix until you have a frothy texture; slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until thoroughly combined
3. Lastly add 1 Tbsp of each seeds and mix in with a spatula enough to blend in (don’t over mix)
4. Pour in mold and top with the rest of pumpkin seeds
5. Bake for 1 hr and 10 minutes; let cool in mold for 10 minutes and let cool for another 15-20 minutes before serving. Enjoy!