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We are experts at letting the bananas sit on the counter too long and get brown. Once there is one brown spot, that poor banana has no hope. It is headed straight for the freezer. If the bananas are frozen, let them sit out for a while to defrost. I have been making this maple banana bread for a couple years, and every time I make it differently because I am out of something or I don’t remember how I did it before. But I do usually add three bananas to this recipe if I have them.
Because I make so this bread so often and we eat it so quickly, I thought I would experiment to make it a tiny bit healthier. I used applesauce to decrease the amount of sugar and maple syrup.
For an excuse to eat the whole loaf…
2 tablespoons of butter, melted
1/8 cup of maple syrup
1 egg
3 really ripe bananas
1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla
6 tablespoons of milk or soy milk
1/2 cup of apples sauce
2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons of white sugar
1/2 cup of chopped nuts of walnuts or mixed nuts
1 cup of quick cooking oats
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 5×9 inch loaf pan or muffin pans.
In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and maple syrup. Beat in the egg and bananas, leaving a few small chunks. Stir in the vanilla extract, milk, and applesauce. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and baking powder, and stir into the banana mixture just until moistened. Transfer to the prepared loaf pan. Sprinkle sugar, oats, and walnuts evenly over the batter. The sugar will make a caramelized crust when the loaf finished baking. Yum.
Bake 50 minutes in the preheated oven (shorter for the muffins), or until a knife inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean.
