Vegan peanut butter banana bread
Vegan peanut butter banana bread
After two solid weeks of basking in the Greek sun, we are finally back home for a bit. Arriving on Wednesday night was a bit of a shock to the system, I must admit. We boarded the flight in Heraklion in 29° C heat and arrived in the UK, just past midnight, in a meagre 9° C and drizzle for that extra misery factor.
If not for the fact that we were missing Tina and she was missing us (she is very affectionate and needy now after an obligatory sulk, of course), we would be tempted to hop right back on that plane…Except that we’ve done that already in the past and it didn’t quite work…
This holiday was just what we needed, a lot of rest in the sun and by the sea. We ended up staying in five different locations across the island for a few days, which gave us a chance to explore more and not get bored. We stayed in Heraklion, Sitia, Ierapetra, Matala and Agia Galini. Of all of them, Matala turned out to be our least favourite as we clearly did not research it well enough – while the landscape was stunning, the place was awash with bus tours and therefore not really to our taste, to be honest. All in all, it was only 2 days and there was a good falafel joint in town, which we loved eating at so not a biggie, but not sure we would recommend it to anyone.
Now that I’m back in my own kitchen and the weather isn’t that spectacular anymore, I really felt like baking something cosy, especially that we are off again on Monday and could do with some baked goods for the road. It’s my birthday on Wednesday (a big, scary birthday!! boohoo 🙁 ) so Duncan is whisking me away to a charming little forest cabin in Wales for a romantic getaway. I am such a lucky duck!! We are planning to do a lot of walking (we are hoping the torrential rain forecast will change at the last minute) and so some banana bread in our hiking packs won’t go amiss, for sure.
I was thinking of making this banana bread so when I walked into my local greengrocer on Thursday and saw a pile of very ripe bananas lying on the counter it felt like a sign. Not only were they perfectly ripe but they were also free – the greengrocer lady was happy to be rid of them. I leapt at the chance (you know how much I hate food waste) and decided that it is my cue to share this recipe with you as I’ve been sitting on it since July (it wasn’t really season appropriate to share UNTIL NOW).
This deliciously moist vegan peanut butter banana bread will make any peanut butter lover squeak with joy. It’s sweetened with maple syrup, uses 100% natural peanut butter in the place of oil or vegan butter and can also be made gluten-free if you so wish. It needs a total of 9 ingredients and very little process or skill so I really hope it will feature in your weekend plans, guys! It’s one of these cakes that is really, really hard to mess up, promise!
- 185 g / ¾ cup peanut butter (I used 100% peanuts one)
- 120 ml / ½ cup maple syrup or agave nectar or brown rice syrup
- 450 g / 2 cups mashed up overripe bananas (approx. 700 g in skins – depends on size)
- 2 tsp lemon, lime juice or neutral vinegar
DRY INGREDIENTS
- 180 g / 1½ cups all purpose wheat flour or tested GF flour mix (I use this one)
- 1½ tsp baking powder
- ¾ tsp baking soda
- 1½ tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp fine sea salt
- Warm up the oven to 175° C / 350° F and line a 900 g / 2 lb cake tin with baking paper. Move the oven rack a notch down from the middle position.
- Loosen up peanut butter by gradually mixing it with maple syrup and 30 ml / 2 tbsp of water, using a fork.
- Add well mashed up bananas and lemon juice (or alternative) until the mixture looks uniform.
- Place a sieve over the wet ingredients and sift in the dry ingredients, folding them in gently just until there are no flour pockets left.
- Transfer the batter into the prepared baking tin. Top the cake with more peanut butter if you wish (or a banana sliced in half lengthwise like here).
- Bake for about 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out fairy clean. Remove from the oven and brush with with a little maple syrup while the cake is still hot to give the top a nice shine.
- Let the cake cool down completely before slicing. Optionally, if you want to decorate the cake like I did, once cooled down, top it with thick vegan coconut yoghurt, caramelised bananas and peanut caramel from this recipe. Use a serrated knife to slice if you have one – I find that it produces neater looking slices.
This banana bread recipe is adapted from a range of my earlier banana cake recipes like Eggless banana bread and Vegan banana bread and Vegan banana bread muffins.
How many servings do you get from this recipe? Looks delicious btw ;)
Thank you, I hope you'll give it a try! The calories given assume 12 slices (I used an 18 cm / 7" long tin). Hope this helps! Ania
PS: we love PB in this house too so you will find many recipes with it on my blog.
I am guessing that so but as I vegan I don't use honey so I have not tested it in any of my recipes. Ania
I have never used monkfruit sweetner so I am not in a position to make any useful suggestions, I'm afraid. If you were to use sugar (as you say that it's similar), I would say you'll need to reduce the amount of liquid the recipe uses so maybe 1¾ cups (instead of 2 cups) of bananas would work better, but I haven't tested that so you'll need to take a risk. Ania
I make banana bread quite often and this will be my new go-to banana bead recipe.
I love this recipe, I have made this 3 times already. Just wondering, would this work well if I put the batter in a muffin tin instead of a cake tin?
That's fantastic, I am delighted to hear that. Yes, it absolutely works - in fact, I have converted that cake into muffins for this recipe. Hope you'll enjoy them! Ania
Would I be able to use golden syrup instead of maple syrup?
This looks absolutely amazing 😋 I am a big fan of both peanut butter and bananas so thanks for sharing the recipe 😊I just put ready mixture in the oven and I can't wait to try. My boyfriend is working away so every week I bake something delicious for his arrival (last week blueberry and strawberry pie 😋) I share some photos and review it tomorrow when I decorate it and finally try it and he will 😉 I'm sure we'll love it! Best regards Kasia
Thank you for sharing the recipe btw!
Also happy birthday in advance!
I am not 100% sure, tbh. Almond flour isn't really a flour so it behaves a bit differently, but certainly worth a try. I suspect the cake may come out too wet if you sub directly. Hope that helps! Ania
Happy birthday Ania. Don’t get caught up in the numbers, meaningless stuff.. you’ll look back at this one and think how young you were then 😉 Wales sounds wonderful what ever the weather.
I am delighted to hear that you and your family enjoyed it. I am curious, did you add to 2 tbsp of water to the batter as specified in step 2 and it still came out a little dry? Hmm, perhaps I need to edit the baking time to 45-50 minutes to alert people to start checking on it earlier. Please let me know. x Ania
You don't say what kind of all purpose flour you have, but if it's the bog standard flour for baking that you can get literally everywhere then it must be wheat flour otherwise it would be stated otherwise. Please let me know if not and I will try to help. Ania
And also what the conversion rate is to cups (or what size cup ro use!
Thanks for the help!
I haven't tried coconut flour, but from what I know it is more absorbent than other flours so you may need to compensate by adding more moisture. Not sure what you mean as I specified the flour in both grams and cups (I use US cups whereby 1 cup equals 240 ml) although I do recommend using scales for dry ingredients when baking as they are more reliable. Hope that helps! Ania