Banana date quinoa bread

Banana date quinoa bread

More experimenting with grain-free cooking. (Don’t worry – I haven’t given up the grains and sugar completely and my next recipe will have no nutritional merit at all.) I bought a few fancy non-grain flours at Archie Brown’s, our favourite vegetarian café in Truro and I wanted to try a banana bread recipe using one of them: quinoa flour. Don’t have any quinoa flour? I’m sure you could use wholewheat flour, spelt flour, or your favourite gluten-free flour instead.

This is another recipe is somewhat adapted from Anja’s Food 4 Thought: Banana Date Spelt Bread. I’ve tweaked it a bit to suit what I fancied making but it’s her idea.

The chocolate makes this primal; to make it paleo, swap back to nuts or some other add-in.

Equipment

Oven
Mini loaf pans (10) is what I used, but you could use an ordinary large loaf pan or a cupcake pan.
Two medium mixing bowls
One smaller mixing bowl
Whisk, preferably a magiwhisk
Scales or measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Fork or potato masher
Wooden spoon
Kettle

Ingredients

Cooking spray or a little neutral oil such as sunflower oil
Quinoa flour – 150g (or use another flour of your choice), 1 1/4 cups
Cinnamon – half a teaspoon (optional)
Baking powder – one teaspoon
Dried dates – 200g, chopped (ordinary block dates are fine), 3/4 cup
Bicarbonate of soda – half a teaspoon
Boiling water – 125 mls, 1/2 cup
Bananas – 2 large, very ripe, mashed
Oil – 3 tablespoons (I used sunflower but use whichever oil appeals to you)
Eggs – 2 large
Dark chocolate – 100g (check that’s it’s dairy-free if you avoid dairy)

Method

1. Switch your oven on at 160 degrees C with fan, or 180 degrees C conventional.
2. Lightly spray your pan(s) with cooking spray, or grease lightly with oil.
3. Measure the flour, cinnamon (if using) and baking powder into one bowl. Whisk together.
4. Chop up the dates and put them into a bowl with the bicarbonate of soda.
5. Boil the kettle and add half a cup (125mls) of boiling water to the dates. Mix together and leave to cool.
6. Mash the bananas in another bowl.
7. Add the oil and crack the eggs into the banana bowl. Whisk together.
8. Give the dates a good stir. They should be disintegrating and turning to a mush. If not, leave them a bit longer.
9. Whisk the flour mixture into the banana mixture, then add the date mush to it. Stir it all together thoroughly.
10. Stir in the chopped chocolate.
11. Divide between your mini-loaf tins or your cupcake moulds, or pour into your loaf tin.
12. Bake until a skewer or cake tester comes out without any crumbs attached; about 20 minutes for mini-loaves or cupcakes, probably more like 35 to 40 minutes for a loaf cake.

They kept well in a box for several days.

I got 10 out of the recipe at 260 calories each. Not too bad for quite a filling snack or even a portable breakfast.

Banana date quinoa bread cooling

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