Health(ier) Banana Bread

I can never finish eating all of the bananas in a bunch before they start to turn brown. As a result, I've made my fair share of banana breads. Pretty straight forward stuff, amiright? Well, after those carrot cake muffins, I was really hoping for something a little healthier to indulge on so I tweaked this recipe a bit and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out. I had wanted to throw a few dark chocolate chips into the mix (dark chocolate is healthy.) but my bag at some point had apparently partially melted and re-hardened into a disaster that I just did not feel like dealing with.



Ingredients:
- 1 1/4 cup oat flour (ground up 2 cups oatmeal)
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 tsp canola oil
- 1 large egg, beaten*
- 2 medium egg whites, beaten*
- 2-3 bananas, ripe
- 1 cup uncooked old fashioned oats


* I just used 2 large eggs instead of 1 large and 2 egg whites. I wanted that extra protein!


Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a loaf pan and set aside. In a large bowl, stir together dry ingredients including the oats and cinnamon.

In a smaller bowl, mash bananas with a potato masher or fork.

Add the wet ingredients (except eggs) to the dry and mix well. Batter will be fairly thick.

Beat the eggs and fold into batter.

Pour batter into pan and bake until top of loaf is firm to touch, 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool in pan for 5 minutes. Flip out and cool on a wire rack for another 10 minutes. Slice loaf into 10 equally sized slices.