Recipe: Quinoa banana bread

If there’s one key baked good in every child’s life, it has to be banana bread. It’s the most “home-ly” of all staples. However, the reason why it’s probably one of everyone’s favourites is because of the extraordinary amount of oil and sugar that one traditional loaf contains. I’ve tried many renditions and substitutions to make it “healthier” but it I find that it often turns out either far too dense, chewy, or bland for my liking. That’s until I stumbled across this gem of a recipe.

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Taking my own twist on it to make it even more guilt-free, those tweaks worked flawlessly. This is one of those recipes I can safely say, “You have to try this.” I know I’ll be using this as one of my go-to banana bread recipes moving forward. I’ll apologize ahead of time if you don’t share my feelings about this, but I have a happy belly filled with this glorious take on a family classic.

Quinoa banana bread
Yield 1 large loaf (makes great muffins too)

INGREDIENTS
2 cups flour
1 ½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 bananas, mashed
½ cup sugar
½ cup butter, melted
1 cup quinoa, cooked

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350F, and grease one large loaf tin (or four mini loaf tin, or muffin tins)
2. Measure dry ingredients into a bowl and mix together.
3. In another bowl, mix eggs, sugar and butter together until well combined.
4. Fold bananas into the wet mixture until just combined.
5. Mix in dry ingredients, then stir in the quinoa.
6. Regardless of the pan you’re using, fill with batter to 2/3 full. There may be leftover batter if making one large tin, so just separate the remainder into muffin tins.
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 55-60 mins for a large loaf; 45-50 for mini loafs; or 20 mins for muffins.