The best eggless whole wheat banana walnut bread

If, like me, you buy bananas every time you go to the grocery store and end up with a few over ripe ones, this is a great way to use them up. This is a fail-proof recipe that yields the perfect loaf every single time. You can use whole wheat flour, all purpose flour or a combination of the two. The bananas make the loaf naturally sweet. So you don't have to add a lot of sugar into the batter. Every time I make this, the kitchen smells wonderful and it gets over in no time at all.






















What you need:

Whole wheat flour - 1.5 cups (Can be substituted with APF or a combination of APF & WWF)
Butter - 1/2 cup, melted (Can be substituted with oil)
Brown Sugar - 3/4 cup
Baking soda - 1 tsp
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Bananas - 3 (very ripe ones, mashed with a fork)
Powdered cinnamon - 1 tsp
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp
Chopped walnuts - 1/4 cup
Raisins - a handful (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degree Fahrenheit.
In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the mashed bananas, cinnamon and vanilla extract. Add flour, baking soda and salt. Mix well. Gently stir in the walnuts and raisins.
Pour the batter into a greased loaf tin and bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely and then slice using a serrated knife.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#82

Whole wheat eggless apple walnut banana squares

Some days back, I went apple picking. Apples, fresh off the tree, are so delicious, so crisp and so juicy - the store bought ones cannot hold a candle to these. Seriously, they are so juicy that even if you were to accidentally scratch one with your nails, you can see the juice spurt out. I came back home with a huge bag of apples that we picked and other than eating them as is, have been trying them out in various bakes. This week's theme for the Blogging Marathon is baking with veggies/fruits and this healthy apple square fits the bill perfectly.

What you need : (Recipe adapted from here)
Whole wheat flour - 2 cups, leveled
Apple -  finely chopped(with peel), 2 cups (I used about one and a half medium sized apples)
Walnuts - 1/2 cup, chopped
Over ripe banana - 2, mashed well
Yogurt - 1/4 cup
Sugar - 1 cup * (see notes at the bottom)
Baking soda - 2 tsp
Cinnamon - 1 tsp
Oil - 1 cup
Vanilla essence - 1 tsp
Salt - 1/4 tsp

In a mixing bowl, mix together, the mashed banana, oil, sugar, yogurt and vanilla essence. Stir in the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, sugar and salt to this.  Mix in the chopped apple and walnuts. Pour into a 15x10x1 cookie sheet, spread evenly with the back of a spatula or wet hands and bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees farenheit for 20 -25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Once cool, cut into squares and store in an air tight container.

Note :
The apples I had were sweet in themselves. Plus, I do not like my bakes to be overly sweet. One cup of sugar makes these squares only moderately sweet. Add up to half a cup more of sugar if you want it to be sweeter.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#45

Banana chocolate chip muffins

Making healthy snacks for kids is an art. Dodging requests for Maggi, Lays or Kurkure every evening and providing something healthy in its stead is definitely something that requires practice and a certain amount of sternness and will power. These muffins are easy to whip up, healthy and at the same time something that kids will love. In fact, my little one made this herself. She did the measuring, the mixing and the spooning into the muffin tin. Needless to say, she enjoyed eating what she made.

What you need: (Recipe adapted from Tarla Dalal's Healthy snacks for kids)
Bananas (mashed) - 1/2 cup(I used 3 small overripe ones)
Whole wheat flour - 4 tbsp
Oats - 2 tbsp
Sugar - 1/4 cup
Vanilla essence - 1/2 tsp
Oil/butter - 1/4 cup
Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
Chocolate chips - 1/4 cup
Salt - 1 tsp

Mash the bananas in a small mixing bowl. This is a task my little girl did very meticulously and with great enjoyment. Mix the vanilla essence and sugar into it.
Take the whole wheat flour, oats, salt and baking powder in a large bowl. Add the banana mixture and oil to it. Mix well. Gently stir in the chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 150 degree centigrade.
Line/grease your muffin tin. Spoon the batter into the muffin tin. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Enjoy!!!

This is my first post for Blogging Marathon #17 themed on Kids' Delight - Evening snacks/Tiffin. Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 17
This post goes to Radhika's Let's cook - Kid's special

Eggless Mango banana muffins

The mango season is upon us and the variety of mangoes that is available in the market leaves me confused as to which one to buy. I end up buying a different kind each time.
On a recent trip to Coorg, I saw a stretch on the Bangalore-Mysore highway filled with street carts that were laden with different types of mango. The foodie in me had to stop and take a closer look. What I liked best about these vendors is that they give nice juicy chunks of mangoes as samples.....you can taste the mango(es) before you decide which one you want to buy.

These vendors from whom I bought mangoes were very happy to pose for a photo.
The mangoes I bought from them have nothing to do with this post because they were eaten up in almost no time.
I recently (as in this morning) bought a silicon muffin pan and immediately started scouring the web for a good muffin recipe. The search led me to Vaishali's mango cupcakes. I made some minor changes to incorporate ingredients that were in a "use-or-perish" state and the end result is a moist, soft and delightfully yellow cupcake.

What you need:
All purpose flour/maida - 1.5 cups
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Baking powder - 2 tsp
Cardamom powder - 1/2 tsp
Mango - 2 medium sized ripe ones
Banana - 4 small, over ripe ones
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Vanilla essence - 1 tsp
Oil - 1/4 cup

Mix the maida, salt, baking powder and cardamom powder together.
Puree the mango and banana. The quantity I used gave me two cups of thick puree. Take sugar, oil and vanilla essence in a bowl. Add the puree to this and beat till well blended.
Stir this into the flour making sure that it is well mixed but take care to not beat too vigorously.
Pour into the muffin pan until 3/4th full. With a silicon pan, there was no need to grease and the baked muffins were extremely easy to pop out of the pan. I made a few in paper muffin cups as well.
Bake at 175 degree centigrade for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Let it cool completely and then dig in.

This post goes to Divya's Show Me Your Muffin event.