(Almost) Vegan Banana Bread

"I don't know if there's a thing as a Banana Bread aficionado, but if there is, I'm pretty sure I'm getting close to becoming one.  "

There are some recipes I make here in France that are immediately a huge hit: the first being pancakes (with maple syrup and butter of course!) and the second being banana bread.  As I mentioned previously, banana bread is one of my favorite things to eat, but at a whopping 400+ calories a serving...well, lets just say you can eat better things!

Recently we had people stay over at our place and in the morning I wanted to make them pancakes.  I opened the cupboards, took out all my ingredients, turned to the fridge and realized that I had no more eggs!  Who says "no eggs" says "(almost) vegan", but I sat there thinking to myself: "but how will the pancakes stick together without any eggs?!"  Then I shrugged and said "oh well...better to try it than not eat anything...and plus, all these vegans can't be wrong.  They've got to eat something!"

So I found this recipe and tried it out and it worked!  I ended up substituting real milk for soymilk and adding chopped up peaches and cherries, but they still worked out really well, and tasted just like real pancakes!

Then I had some bananas that I had put in the freezer a while ago because they were about to go rotten and since I was on an (almost) vegan kick, I said to myself "why not?"

This recipe was inspired by this one, if you vegans are out there looking for some new recipes.

This is what I came up with (and seriously, this banana bread is simply to die for.  It might almost be better than the real thing!):

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This recipe is vegetarian: yes!
This recipe is vegan: no (but can be easily adapted to be so)

Serves: 10
Calories per serving: 267

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What you'll need:

- 2 Cups All Purpose Flour
- 1 Cups Sour Creme (or 1 C soymilk or almond milk or coconut milk for you vegans)
- 1/4 Cup Maple Syrup
- 1/2 Cup Sugar
- 1/2 Cup Light Brown Sugar
- 1 TBSP Baking Soda
- 4 Medium Bananas (extra ripe)
- 1 TBSP Cinnamon
- Oil to grease pan (or butter)

Lets get cooking!

-Preheat oven to 350F (180C)

- In a bowl put the sour creme, maple syrup, white and brown sugars and baking soda.  Mix together until smooth.

- Add bananas to the mixture and mix until completely incorporated.

- Add the flour and mix until smooth.

- Grease your 9 x 5 bread pan and add about 3/4 of the batter.  Sprinkle the cinnamon over the top so that it's all covered (if you want more cinnamon, feel free to put as much as you want!)

- Pour the rest of the batter into the pan.

- Bake in the preheated oven for about an hour or until a knife when inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean.

- Let cool until the pan is no longer hot and, then place it on a rack to cool completely before serving.  If you cut it when it's too hot, due to the fact that there are no eggs, it will fall apart.

Enjoy!