This banana bread was yesterday’s gift to me. I made it in between the usual 4-kids-under-4 emergencies and disasters, cuddling a teething, nap-striking baby, and crock-potting a roast chicken for dinner. (Is crock-potting a word? I’m gonna go ahead and declare it one.)
I had some spotty bananas that were begging me to make them into banana bread. I could hear their little banana cries. They were past their youth, their prime bright yellow youth, and they were begging me to not give up on them yet. “We still have plenty to offer the world”, they cried. “We may be elderly, but we aren’t dead yet!” they exclaimed with passion.
Why yes, now that you mention it, I may have been reading a little too much into the situation, given the rapidly approaching death of my twenties (July 5, in case you care. Or wanna send flowers. Or whatever.)
Regardless – I decided to play around and come up with a recipe for banana bread that is not gonna feel like a rock in my gut (sometimes gluten does that to me) and doesn’t use refined sugar (Ain’t nobody need be eatin’ that on a regular basis. And you can be dang sure this is a Regular Basis Kind of Recipe). It is verrrry loosely based off of this recipe (mainly the flour ratios).
It uses rice flour and tapioca starch as the base. I am currently loving tapioca starch in my baking – it’s magical. I also decided to add ground chia seeds to see if it would give it a nice non-crumbly texture, as so many GF baked goods are prone to. It worked perfectly. The texture is amazing – non-crumbly, moist (but not eggy like with coconut flour), and remarkably “normal” tasting if you’re used to the wheat-based baked goods. The spices and ratios I used gave it a fabulous overall flavour, and well, let’s just say this recipe makes two loaves because loaf #1 disappeared in less than 24 hours.
Here you go. If you don’t have the ingredients on hand then I highly suggest you get your butt out to the store to get them, stat. Like, stop reading, and go now. Your taste buds will thank you later.
Perfect Banana-Pecan Bread
Ingredients
- 2-1/4 cups Mashed very ripe banana
- 4 Eggs
- ⅓ cup Honey softened/melted if not already liquid
- ⅓ cup Coconut oil melted
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla extract
- ½ cup Coconut palm sugar
- 2 cups White rice flour
- 1 cup Tapioca starch
- 2 teaspoons Ground chia seeds I use my Vitamix to grind them. You could also use a food processor or a coffee grinder.
- 1 teaspoon Baking soda
- 1 teaspoon Sea salt
- 2 teaspoons Cinnamon ground
- ½ teaspoon Nutmeg ground
- ½ teaspoon Cloves ground
- 1 cup Pecans chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F and grease two loaf pans with coconut oil.
- Add first five ingredients to a large bowl (bananas, eggs, coconut oil, honey, vanilla) and mix well (I use an electric hand mixer).
- Add the rest of the ingredients (minus the pecans) to another bowl, and stir well to combine.
- Add dry ingredients to wet gradually, mixing well to combine.
- Stir in the pecans.
- Pour batter equally into the two prepared loaf pans (I use glass pans, and it works great. I recommend glass or stoneware, but not "non-stick" as it used toxic chemicals).
- Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes. Test if it is done by sticking a very sharp knife into the middle. If the knife does not come out clean, bake for another 2 minutes and re-test.
- Let cool for 10 minutes before slicing, then enjoy with a nice slathering of butter (unless you're dairy-free, in which case I feel sorry for you and suggest perhaps, uh, marmalade? It's delicious on its own too, of course!)
Frances
Looks delish!
Erin
Can you sub white whole wheat flour for the rice flour and/or tapioca starch? No gluten issues here, and just trying to use what I’ve already got on hand. Thanks!
Beth
I’ve never tried it, but I would guess that it would work fine! 🙂
Talina
I am enjoying this deliciousness right now! SO GOOOD!
I used brown rice flour, added some apple sauce because I didn’t quite have enough bananas and I used maple syrup instead of honey, because I was out of honey.
So…it might not be the same, but still great! The recipe is a great base recipe and obv. very forgiving to substitutes if need be!
I may or may not have already eaten half a loaf….by myself.
Vicki
Looks delish! Have you tried using brown rice flour? That’s all I have on-hand at the moment…
Beth
You know what? I used white rice flour because it’s what I had on hand. I totally think brown rice flour would work too! 🙂
(I don’t think the difference between brown rice flour and white rice flour are the same as the differences between white wheat and whole wheat… for one the textures of the rice flours seem to be the same)
Jule
Looks good, I can almost smell it baking!
By the way, you mentioned 4 kids under 4- do you babysit, or are you expecting again? 🙂
Beth
Haha, you are very perceptive 🙂 I babysit my niece 4 days/week, and she’s just 6 weeks younger than my daughter. It’s chaos, haha! 🙂