Gluten-free Banana Bread

This banana bread recipe answers the question “Can desserts be delicious without the gluten?”

Wet Ingredients

• 3 ripe bananas
• 1 egg and 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients

• 2 cups gluten-free baking flour
• ? cup organic cane sugar
• ? cup organic light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• ? teaspoon salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350?F. Peel the bananas and place them in a small bowl. I find that really ripe bananas work best for this recipe. Mash the bananas until they turn into a smooth puree, about one cup. I used a fork to mash my bananas and it worked just fine.
2. Crack the eggs and place them in a separate, large bowl and beat them. Add the apple sauce, olive oil and vanilla extract to the eggs and mix together. Use whatever applesauce you like. I use organic apple sauce made from apples only (no additives). Slowly mix the bananas into the other wet ingredients and mix until smooth.
3. In a medium-sized bowl, add the dry ingredients: gluten-free baking flour, cane sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Mix the dry ingredients and then add them to the wet ingredients and stir. Note that the texture of the batter will be soft. Its softer batter than you would expect, but trust me when I say that it will turn into bread when baked in the oven. At this point, you can add nuts, raisins or chocolate chips to the batter, but I left my banana bread plain.
4. Grease a loaf pan. I used a 9? x 4 1/2? bread pan. Pour the batter into the pan. Then, place the pan in the center of the warm oven and bake the bread for approximately 50-60 minutes. Oven times may vary, so in order to know if it?s done, stick a toothpick into the middle of the bread until it comes out clean. Once the bread has been baked, let it sit for 10 minutes to cool. Then, flip the loaf pan over and let the bread rest on a wire rack.