Pumpkin Banana Bread

It’s time for another post where I make someone else’s recipe! This is a GOOD one. I thought it would be a good day to finally post this, seeing as I am still recovering from yesterday’s half marathon, and I don’t think I’ll be running tomorrow either. Just a tad sore today.

During the last year of my mom’s life, I spent a lot of time scouring the internet for vegan recipes. Desserts mostly. My mom always had to have some kind of cookie or muffin or baked good in the house. And let’s face it, so do I.

At one point I came across healthy dessert guru Chocolate Covered Katie and her recipe for Pumpkin Banana Bread. Not only do I love both pumpkin and banana, but, as her name would indicate, her pumpkin banana bread was smothered in chocolate chips. As far as choosing something delicious and vegan to make for my mom, this seemed like a no-brainer.

FULL RECIPE: Pumpkin Banana Bread by Chocolate Covered Katie

As usual, I don’t want to copy and paste someone else’s entire recipe, so please visit her site to see the full instructions. However, I will post the ingredients I used in my recipe:

All-Purpose Flour
100% Pumpkin Puree
Overripe Bananas
Non-dairy Mini Chocolate Chips
Grade A Pure Maple Syrup
Unsweetened Almond Milk
Baking Soda
Baking Powder
Vanilla Extract
Salt
Cinnamon
Ginger
Nutmeg

I made a few tweaks to Katie’s recipe:

• She likes using oat flour, but I used all-purpose flour and it came out fine. I’ll probably try oat flour in the future.
• She lists Stevia or “sweetener of choice” but I never feel the need to add a sweetener if I’m already using maple syrup and/or chocolate chips. I ignored this ingredient and the end result tastes great to me.
• She lists pumpkin pie spice but I didn’t have this, so I added a 1/2 tsp. of nutmeg along with the cinnamon and ginger. The nutmeg is good! You don’t need a lot of it.

Other than that, I followed her recipe as written.

This pumpkin banana bread is so damn good. Oh my god. It’s one of the only recipes I still make for myself every so often, just to have it in the fridge so I can grab a piece when I need a quick fix.

If you like the idea of combining pumpkin, banana, chocolate, with a touch of cinnamon, this recipe is for you.

Katie recommends using a 9×5 loaf pan, but the first few times I made this recipe, I did not own a loaf pan. So I used a more square-shaped glass dish you see in the above photo. Instead of cutting them into slices like bread, I cut them into small squares.

I’ve since bought a loaf pan but I think I’ll continue making the recipe in my more square dish, as I prefer cutting them into squares.

Make sure your bananas are overripe. They need to have been sitting on your counter for a few days, unless you just buy them overripe. It calls for 1 ½ cups of mashed banana, or 360 grams. For 360 grams of banana, I would recommend you have either three large, four medium, or five small bananas. (That might not be exact; it’s just a guess.)

If a recipe indicates how many grams or ounces one item should be, I always use a food scale as opposed to measuring cups. This is partly because I am anal, but also I feel like why NOT be as accurate as possible? This is not the way my mom baked at all, but I guess I take more after my dad in that respect. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The last time I made this recipe (not when these pictures were taken), I used three medium-sized bananas, which I thought might be enough, but they were 83 grams short of 360 grams. I made up for it by using 83 more grams of pumpkin puree and everything turned out fine. The final product was delicious, and even moister than usual. Is “moister” a word? If so, is it more or less despised than “moist?” Your thoughts in the comments!

The first step is whisking all the dry ingredients together. Easy!

In a separate bowl, I mashed the bananas and whisked together the pumpkin, almond milk, vanilla, and chocolate chips.

Before two become one…

Then I poured the dry into wet and stirred ’em together! You don’t need an electric mixer, just a big wooden spoon will do. Don’t do what I’ve mistakenly done and use a whisk for this step, because all the batter will get stuck in the whisk and you’ll be like why didn’t I just use a spoon for this and then you just have to lick all the stuff you can’t shake out of the whisk and your tongue feels like it’s making its way through a weird torture device.

The recipe calls for an “optional” half cup of chocolate chips, so obviously add as many chips as you’d like. I’ve made this with slightly fewer chocolate chips, but last time I went back to a half cup. However many I use, I like to stir two thirds into the batter and then sprinkle another third on top right before it goes into the oven. You do what you want.

Once all the ingredients are combined, pour it into a glass dish. You can use a loaf pan as the recipe calls for or a more square dish like I did. Either way it’ll be great.

One of the best parts of baking: stuff to lick!

I followed the recipe by baking at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, then turning off the oven and letting it sit for another 10. Even though you’re not supposed to do this, I sometimes peek at it while it’s baking.

IT SMELLS SO GOOD WHILE IT’S BAKING.

After it’s out of the oven, the recipe says to let it cool completely before covering and putting it in the fridge to sit overnight, but honestly, I can never wait that long. I do let mine cool a bit, but cut into it while it’s still warm.

I never regret doing this. It is DELICIOUS.

I like cutting mine into 20 squares. This makes for a perfect 4-bite size. (Or a 1-bite size if you’re super hungry.)

I took those last two pictures after it had been in the fridge overnight. It’s just as good cold as it is warm.

Believe it or not, these little babies are only a little over 100 calories each. I’ll list the nutrition facts according to how I made them: using all-purpose flour, a half cup of non-dairy mini chocolate chips, and cutting up the entire batch into 20 pieces. This is courtesy of myfitnesspal:

I love this super simple and delicious recipe and it will definitely continue to be on heavy rotation in my kitchen. All of Katie’s recipes look so good. I can’t wait to try more!

If you make this, let me know how it went!