Whole Wheat Cinnamon Banana Bread!

Sorry I've been MIA for a few days! I'm defending my graduate research in a month from today (ahh!/yay!) and have some huge deadlines rapidly approaching in the next two weeks so please bear with me!

I have an awesome recipe to share with y'all tonight! The first is a healthified version of a homemade favorite - banana bread!

This bread is easy, tasty, and also customizable. You have a few options with the ingredients to make it as healthy/sweet as you like.

Ingredients:

2 cups of whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce

3/4 cup honey (or 3/4 cup sugar, or for no-sugar-added, use 1.5 tsp stevia)

2 eggs

3 ripe bananas

Optional cinnamon swirl: 1/3 cup sugar and 1 tbs cinnamon

First, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl and mix.

In a separate bowl, mix bananas, applesauce, eggs, and honey/sugar/stevia. I really recommend using a mixer for this part. I didn't, and my bananas were still kind of chunky.

Add banana mixture to flour mixture.

For no-swirl bread, pour batter into a Pam-ed or buttered loaf pan.

If you do want to include a cinnamon swirl (so good!), mix 1/3 cup sugar with 1 tbs of cinnamon, pour half the batter into the loaf pan, sprinkle half of the cinnamon-sugar mixture over the batter, add the rest of the batter, then sprinkle the remaining cinnamon-sugar mixture on the top.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, when a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Top with butter, peanut butter, or just eat right out of the pan!

My comments on the customizations: if you do decide to omit sugar or honey and use stevia, I will warn you that the bread is not sweet like traditional banana bread. It is still really yummy, just not sweet like you may be expecting. Since I prefer a sweeter banana bread but don't want to eat too much sugar, I usually cut the amount of sugar in half. Just sweet enough!