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. 2^nd.  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…