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slices of healthy banana bread on a wooden cutting board
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5 from 10 votes

Healthy Banana Bread Without Brown Sugar

This super moist, best ever, easy healthy banana bread recipe is sugar-free and low-fat, making it the perfect guilt-free snack. You’ll want to munch on this healthy banana bread all day!
Prep Time20 minutes
Cook Time1 hour
Total Time1 hour 20 minutes
Course: Baking, Bread
Cuisine: American
Servings: 16 slices
Calories: 137.8kcal
Author: Anjali Shah

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Preheat over to 325. Spray a loaf pan with cooking spray and dust with flour.
  • Mash the bananas in a small bowl with a fork. Beat eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until thick, about 4 minutes.
  • Add bananas, buttermilk, oil and vanilla extract and mix again until well combined, about 1 minute.
  • Sift in remaining dry ingredients, and beat until blended, about 2 more minutes. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
  • Bake about 1 hour, or until golden brown on top and fork inserted in center comes out clean. Turn out onto rack and let cool. Slice and enjoy!

Video

https://youtu.be/sZBTaU3U3bA

Notes

Recipe Variations
I love homemade banana bread plain, but there are so many ways you can mix up this recipe! Here are some of my favorite variations:
  • Nuts and seeds: This recipe already has walnuts, but you can switch out the walnuts for any nut you like! Pecans, hazelnuts or almonds work particularly well. You can also add in pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds on top of the banana bread right before you put it in the oven.
  • Chocolate chips: Which just make everything better! I like using 70% dark chocolate chips or chopping up a dark chocolate bar for even more cocoa flavor. You can fold it into the batter directly, or add it on top of the banana bread before baking (or both!)
  • Spices: This recipe uses cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg, but you can always try pumpkin pie spice or even ground ginger for a change of pace.
  • Fruit: Try adding in fresh blueberries or shredded coconut! Dried fruit would work equally well: raisins, cherries, currants would be delicious.
  • For more protein, add split peas: What? Split peas? You'd be surprised, but yes! You can add in 1 cup of split pea puree instead of the bananas, or 1/2 cup instead of 1/2 of the bananas (made by boiling split peas and pureeing with water - should be the consistency of canned pumpkin).
Top Tips For Making The Best Healthy Banana Bread
  • Let the banana bread cool before cutting it into slices! Otherwise, it will crumble and fall apart! 
  • Make sure to keep the wet ingredients separate until you mix in the dry ingredients. This helps the ingredients to fully mix together and be nice and chewy when the bread is out of the oven
  • The key to getting this banana bread super sweet is to use extremely ripe bananas - this means bananas with LOTS of brown spots!
  • To make this recipe vegan friendly, use flax eggs instead of the eggs and unsweetened almond milk instead of the buttermilk.
  • Make sure all of your ingredients are at room temperature before you mix them.
  • Make sure your baking soda is fresh (that means not more than 3 months old!)
  • Don't overmix the batter -- if you do you will end up with a tougher banana bread that isn't as moist and fluffy.

Nutrition

Serving: 1slice | Calories: 137.8kcal | Carbohydrates: 23.4g | Protein: 3.4g | Fat: 4.3g | Saturated Fat: 0.6g | Cholesterol: 23.5mg | Sodium: 87.3mg | Potassium: 138.4mg | Fiber: 2.7g | Sugar: 10g