The Tale of Two Vegan Banana Breads

Those who have known me for a long time know that I love to bake and, to an only slightly lesser extent, cook. Baking has been one of my go-to stress relieving activities. While working on the last year of my undergrad and also working full-time and raising a teenager I would often get frustrated or experience writer’s block. At my breaking point I would often drop everything and make a batch of cookies or loaf of banana bread. The act of doing something constructive and successful helped clear my brain.

About 6 weeks ago I became vegan. I might chat more about that at a different time. It has been a gradual process for me that started last fall with going back to being vegetarian. Eliminating eggs and dairy from my diet seemed almost like the natural next step. I don’t really miss them, but it has made one of my favourite past-times somewhat more challenging.

My adventures in vegan baking have been minimal. However, I have accumulated a nice supply of recipes to try saved on Pinterest (my absolute favourite place for recipes and photos of Benedict Cumberbatch😜) Sadly, I don’t have anyone to bake for right now. My roommate (aka my stepmum) is watching her calorie intake and my daughter lives over 2000 miles away.

I have attempted a couple recipes. The first was a success: Vegan Banana Bread. It was tasty, and I will attest that I doubt anyone would have known it was vegan. It was moist and had a good texture and flavour.

My next attempt was just a couple of evenings ago. I had blueberries in the freezer from last year’s crop (yeah we have a few blueberry bushes) that needed to be used and ripe bananas so I found a recipe on Pinterest that looked promising: Gluten-free Vegan Blueberry Banana Bread.

So, this one was not quite as successful. It

wasn’t a failure and I don’t blame the recipe. I will say I didn’t make it gluten-free (used part all-purpose flour instead of gluten-free) because that’s not necessary in this household. The problem lies in the fact that the recipe has not added sugar. Not a horrible thing if your bananas have flavour and it’s rare to find a banana that any flavour let alone enough flavour to sweeten up. The poor blueberries just couldn’t do all the work.

So next time, and there probably will be a next time because I haven’t given up on this recipe, I will add a bit of sweetener as suggested in the blog portion of the recipe. I must give a big thumbs up for how pretty the loaf turns out with the lovely blueberries giving it some colour.

Okay that’s it for now. If you’re interested give the recipes a go and see what you think. If you have any vegan recipes you’d like to share with me, please leave a comment. I’d love to try them out.