Chocolate Chip Muesli Banana Bread
Nothing beats a good banana bread in my opinion. Squidgy in the middle, crisp on the edges and even better filled with chunks of chocolate and dried fruit. Better still, banana bread ingredients are nearly always loitering in your kitchen cupboards – no flax eggs or random fruit syrups required (although I’m a big advocate of the flax egg and would never bad-mouth it!). Banana bread is also really forgiving ingredient-wise and will be happy with most substitutions you might have to make:
- If you haven’t got coconut oil, swap it for 75ml vegetable oil.
- If you haven’t got self-raising flour, swap it for plain flour and add an extra teaspoon of baking powder.
- If you haven’t got spelt flour, you can use wholemeal, rye, or just more self-raising. You really can’t go wrong.
Banana bread fillings are one of my favourite adventures. Add in blueberries, raspberries, little chunks of apple, chopped nuts, dark chocolate or dried apricots and you’ve got a whole new loaf on your hands.
I added muesli to this one to make it more of a breakfast loaf and have been enjoying it toasted and topped with yoghurt and chia jam. After it was baked and cooled, I sliced it up and popped it in the freezer so I can grab a slice or two at a moments notice. It’s true that although it’s great to have baked goods in the house, I do sometimes feel the pressure to not let them go to waste and will end up forcing myself to get through whole batches of brownies before they go bad. For that reason I love freezer-friendly bakes because I can eat a little bit straight out of the oven and then go back to it whenever I fancy, rather than eating banana bread twice a day for a week. Although that doesn’t really sound all that bad. In any case, what’s better than rummaging around in your freezer and finding an entire banana bread you had forgotten about!
Chocolate Chip Muesli Banana Bread
Ingredients:
3 overripe bananas
75ml melted coconut oil (equivalent to 75g solid)
100g brown sugar
200g self-raising flour
25g spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
65g muesli
3 tbsp cacao nibs or chocolate chips
1 tsp vegan butter for greasing
Extra sprinkle of muesli and chocolate chips for topping
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a standard loaf tin with the vegan butter and line it with baking paper.
- Peel and mash the bananas in a large bowl and mix in the melted coconut oil and brown sugar.
- Add in the self-raising flour, spelt flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt and stir well. Be careful not to overmix as this can make the bread quite tough – you want the ingredients to have just come together with no flecks of unmixed flour running through.
- Fold in the muesli and chocolate chips and pour into the greased, lined loaf tin. Sprinkle some extra muesli and chocolate chips on top.
- Bake for 40 – 45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. If the top starts to get a little too brown before it’s cooked, cover with some tinfoil.
- Allow to cool for 15 – 20 minutes in the tin before turning out and leaving to cool completely before slicing.
