Thursday, January 12, 2012

Baking Withdrawal?

Yes, baking withdrawal!  That is what I was going through last week.  The Christmas eating season was finally over and I was going through withdrawal.  I had been baking, decorating, or planning Christmas eating events for over a month – since Thanksgiving.  Never mind the Christmas eating for that long too!  The last of the Christmas cookies were gone – carefully polished off during our de-decorating time on Jan. 2nd.  Then the regular schedules were back in place.  What to do!        
 Sitting on my counter were some brown bananas.  My family won’t eat any banana that has a brown speck on it.  I will, but it was just too many!  There were six.  I could bake banana bread or banana cookies or banana muffins or banana something…  So I decided that I should find a healthy banana bread recipe.  I have whole wheat flour and flaxseed meal – so let’s incorporate those.  I looked up these ingredients and found an interesting recipe.  It had whole wheat flour, flaxseed meal, egg whites, no oil and not a lot of sugar.  It also called for 5 mashed bananas – I had 6 very brown ones! Was it worth a try?
If the ingredients sound good, I am willing to try any recipe.  So here is what I tried:  Whole Grain Healthy Banana Bread from yummly.com    http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Whole-Grain-Healthy-Banana-Bread-Allrecipes
Having 5 bananas in this recipe instead of the standard 2 made it moist – usually it’s oil and eggs that make quick bread moist.  I used regular sugar – it does suggest a sugar substitute (that’s another blog topic I am sure I will get to some time).  And I used plain Greek yogurt instead of the sour cream – a new substitution I have become very fond of!  For the 2 teaspoons of egg whites, I used a whole egg white – I couldn’t be bothered measuring out 2 teaspoons of egg white – you know how gooey it can be!
So, anyway it came out great.  I was a little skeptical, when I took it out of the pan and it was super heavy – I guess it’s all those whole grains in there!  My family loved it and it is definitely a keeper recipe.  It stored well and was a great snack in between ski runs on Saturday – two days after I made it. 
So, happy baking, even if it’s not fancy Christmas cookies…

2 comments: