Strawberry Banana Bread

Strawberry Banana Bread

How is your March break going? I think Esme would say that her favourite part of her week off so far was spending a day with me at our lovely Maya’s studio. Since she’s been at “big school” we haven’t had as much opportunity for her to join me on set and she really likes it. I had a good time having her with me, too, and you’ll see some of those stories in the next few weeks. She’s developed some very strong opinions about food styling involving American Girl dolls. But you know what I’ve loved this week? Not packing a lunch. I did a little happy dance on Sunday night when I remembered that I didn’t have to get in the kitchen and batch cook lunch items for the week.

Hopefully your own break from the lunch-packing grind has given you the mental space it can sometimes require to take on some baking projects with your kids. As much as we believe in cooking all kinds of things with kids, there’s no denying that the end result with baking is just more motivating. Here’s one I hope your family will like baking and snacking on for the rest of  the week. When I was scrolling though our archives (man we’ve cooked a lot over the past three years!) I was surprised to discover that we’ve never done a banana bread. I love a classic banana loaf but you probably already have a recipe you like for that, right? I felt like something a bit different so I’ve added some diced fresh strawberries. Plus, I wanted to keep the fat content low without compromising moistness by using yogurt rather than a lot of oil. I straight-up jacked the food styling of the sliced strawberries on top from the wonderful Joy the Baker. Pretty, right? The trick to making a great banana bread of any variation is using really, really ripe bananas. Like, those nearly black ones you’re about to toss? Perfect. Just-ripe fruit will not give you a great flavour. Happy baking!

strawberrybananaloaf

photo by Maya Visnyei

Strawberry Banana Bread

Ingredients

  • 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large bananas)
  • 1/2 cup Greek yogurt
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup chopped strawberries, plus a few for the top

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Lightly grease your loaf pan.

In a large bowl, mix your mashed bananas, yogurt, oil, sugar, egg and vanilla.

In another bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

Shake the dry ingredients over the wet and mix until combined - but don't over do it or your bread will be tough.

Now stir in the strawberries so they're evenly throughout the batter.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan and use a spatula to scrape out all the batter out of the bowl.

Trim and ut a couple of strawberries into very thin slices and place them across the top of your batter either randomly or in a pattern.

Bake the loaf for 45 to 55 minutes until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Allow the loaf to cool for a few minutes before turning it out onto a rack to cool completely.

 

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