Perfectly soft and moist gluten free banana bread that taste just like real thing!
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So I bought a tonne of bananas from a local fruit and vegetable market a few days ago, carefully picking the best looking bowl among many really not so great looking ones – all healthy,Β no sign of browning at all, yellow but not too ripe. Perfect bananas.
I handed the bowl over to the lady working there, as you do, and started picking other things while she packedΒ the bananas away into a bag. I noticed an odd startled look on her face when I turned back to hand her a bowl of lemons, but didn’t think much of it. You know, it’s a fruit and vegetable stall.Β I’m handing bowls of fruits. It’s a pretty normal non-event. It can’t have anything to do with me. So I grabbed my bags, paid and left.
And… then I got homeΒ and uncovered this little surprise:
Yep, that’s right… she swapped my damn bananas for this dying mess while I wasn’t looking and was startled by my nearly catching her in the act! Can you believe this!? I mean, how cheeky is that!??Β ???
Well played, evil market lady. YouΒ won this round…
And so what do you do with dead bananas? Banana bread, of course!
It was actually my first attempt as well. In all my gluten free years so far, I’ve surprisingly never tried to make gluten free banana bread until today! And I was very impressed with the result.Β Absolutely perfect. Delicious flavour, incredibly soft, bouncy, just the right amount of moisture and it lifted nicely as well.Β It tastes just like what I remember ‘normal’ banana bread tasting like!Β So thank you market lady, I probably wouldn’t have done this without you.
Note: I based myself on a banana and chestnut bread recipe that I found in The Gluten-Free Cookbook, but had to make a few changes:
- First of all I ditched the chestnut flour completely (which is supposed to make up half of the flour used in this recipe). This is not something I’ve ever bought and it’s a bit too expensive for my liking. I ended up using a combination of Doves Farm gluten free self-raising flour and M&S made without wheat flour blend instead (not that you need two different blends, I just ran out of Doves Farm midway through lol).
- I used self-raising flour blends instead of plain. It’s justΒ easier that way as it already contains the raising agents as well as xanthan gum.
- I didn’t have any butter so I used coconut oil instead.
- I substituted the light muscovado sugar for a combination of dark muscovado and caster sugar.
So all in all it was changed quite a bit, but still turned out brilliant! I got this book as a Christmas presents last year and every recipe I’ve tried or based myself on so far has yielded perfect results so check it out if you’re interested. π
Gluten free banana bread recipe:
Difficulty: Easy
Preparation time:Β 10 minutes
Cooking time: 50 minutes
Temperature: 180C (356F)
Ingredients
- 280g gluten free self-raising flour (I used a mixture of Doves Farm and M&S GF flour blends)
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp xanthan gum (only if your flour blend doesn’t already contain it – mine did)
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- Pinch of salt
- 3 medium or 4 small bananas (very ripe)
- 115g unsalted butter or oil of your choice (I used coconut oil)
- 115g sugar (I used half dark muscovado, half caster sugar)
- 3 eggs
- 90ml whole milk
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 180C (356F).
- Grease a bread tin and line with parchment paper.
- Mix flour, baking powder, xanthan gum (if necessary), spices and salt together in a bowl.
- Melt the butter or oil in the microwave and stir in the sugar.
- Beat the eggs and milk together.
- Mash the bananas.
- Add everything to the dry ingredients and mix well with a spoon. Don’t worry if there are a few lumps left due to the bananas and dark muscovado.
- Pour the batter into the bread tin and cook on the middle shelf for about 50 minutes. To check if the banana bread is ready, poke it in the centre with a metal skewer or knife. If it comes out clean, it’s ready. If not, let it cook a bit longer.
- Wrap in cling film and store in an airtight container to prevent it from drying out. I store mine in the fridge to help it last longer, but there is a lot of debate out there about whether or not it needs to be refrigerated.
Enjoy!
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Looks great! I’ve never tried using coconut oil instead of butter. I’ll definitely give it a try!
In something like this is the sugar amount necessary for consistency or just to sweeten? I’m finding many recipes with what I consider quite high sugar content for my taste so am avoiding them.
It does help with the texture as well, it makes it softer and more tender. I completely understand what you mean though. Maybe you could try swapping the sugar (or part of it) for something like apple sauce (and adjust the dry ingredients accordingly)? Although that still contains added sugar, it’s at least better. I’ll have to give that a go at some point. π
This looks delicious and I love how you managed to see the positive in your market adventure π I love your blog, by the way! π x
Aww thank you! I’ll have to check out your blog later on when I have a bit more time. π And as for the market lady, haha, how cheeky was that? Good that old bananas are still usable at some extent (the worst is when they do that with avocados! -_- lol).