Friday, February 17, 2012

Easy Vegan Chocolate Banana Bread

I've had seven spent bananas sitting in my freezer for nearly a month.  I kept telling myself that I was going to make banana bread.  I WAS GOING TO DO IT.

Yesterday, I finally did.  It's pretty darn good.  I actually think the batter tasted better than the bread itself (not something I usually find true).  But, the bread (cold, with a tiny smearing of Earth Balance on it) it pretty great, too.  I like this recipe, as it's not ridiculously sweet.  It has a decent amount of sugar, but not as much as in many quick bread recipes.

The recipe comes from Isa Chandra on Post Punk Kitchen.  Per loaf:

1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c white sugar 
(if you're trying to be a good vegan, as I am, try to use unrefined sugar, the refining process is a little horrifying)
1/2 c margarine 
(room temperature or slightly melty)
3 very ripe bananas
(mashed well, I used 7 bananas for 2 loaves)
2 c flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 c vanilla soy milk curdled with 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
(I subbed 1/2 tsp cardamom here)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c cocoa powder (my own addition)

Preheat oven to 350 and lightly oil your bread pan.  Cream margarine and sugars together.  Add bananas and curdled soy milk to the sugar mixture.  Sift/wisk together the dry ingredients.  Add wet ingredients to dry and mix very well.  Fill your bread pan (it'll rise about 1- 1.5 inches).  Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour 10 depending on how psychotic you oven is.

Quick breads are very likely the easiest baked thing to veganize as bananas are an effective egg replacer.


Thawed banana (pre-mushing).  You should have seen it coming out of the peel...


I'm not usually a batter eater, but this stuff tasted like chocolate frozen bananas.


Super moist and awesome for breakfast of with vegan ice cream (bonus points for sprinkling the ice cream with cardamom).

What are your favorite quick breads?