Meatless Monday - Makeover Banana Bread

Another big thank you to the people at Meatless Monday for featuring my Cheesy Broccoli Frittata recipe on their site this week!  Jump on over there and look at all of the wonderful recipes and information that they have to offer!

File it under "Life's Great Mysteries"...I have a son who hates bananas with a passion - the smell, the flavor, the texture -  but is absolutely crazy about banana bread.  And yet my daughter who eats multiple bananas a day doesn't care for banana bread at all.  Such is life with picky eaters!

Since discovering my son's love of banana bread, we've had it for breakfast a lot.  I am NOT a morning person and don't like to make breakfast in general.  Banana bread is great because it's so super easy to throw together the night before, and it's a great way to use up old bananas to boot!

I've taken a very good banana bread recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (a wonderful wedding present many, many years ago) and adapted it to suit our tastes and lifestyle.  I add some mini-chocolate chips to keep the kids coming back, but you could leave those out or replace them with nuts or raisins or whatever makes your taste buds happy.  This recipe remains a work in progress, but here is the latest incarnation that gets 2 big thumbs up from everyone in my house (my daughter excluded)!

Makeover Banana Bread
 
1 cup white whole wheat flour (regular whole wheat flour would be fine as well)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup sugar
2 TBSP wheat germ or flax meal
2-3 medium mashed bananas (about 1 to 1 1/2 cups)
2 1/2 TBSP butter
3 TBSP plain, natural applesauce
2 eggs
2 TBSP skim milk
1/2 cup mini-chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a large mixer, blend all of the dry ingredients (flours through wheat germ).  Add the wet ingredients (mashed banana through milk) and mix on high speed for a minute.  Stir in chocolate chips.

Pour batter into a lightly greased loaf pan.  Bake in a 350 F oven for 55-60 min or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.  Cool for 5-10 min.  Remove from pan.  Enjoy!

What's your favorite go-to easy breakfast?  I'm always looking for easy, healthy breakfast ideas - especially ones that can be prepared the night before! 

Yikes!  Thanks to a reader I just realized that I left out the sugar in the recipe above!  This banana bread DOES have added sugar in it - I just forgot to include it when I typed it out.  That said, the banana is sweet enough that if you use a full 3 bananas, I'm sure that you could significantly reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe (or leave it out completely if you don't have a sweet tooth like I do) and still have a good bread.  Reducing the sugar is just not something that I've played around with in this recipe.  BIG apologies for the blunder!