So many people are watching their weight, cholesterol, or just trying to eat a little healthier these days and sometimes many recipes aren’t friendly to those kinds of diets.
I have a few tricks that can help you change up your favorite recipe to something that is still tasty but lower in calories, fat, and cholesterol.
I’m going to share with you my favorite banana bread recipe. This is my go to recipe whenever we have really ripe bananas because it’s simple, makes one loaf, and best of all is that it’s all made in one bowl! I’ll admit it too that sometimes I just let the bananas ripen so we can make this bread!
I can’t take credit for this recipe though. Elise Bauer from Simply Recipes gets all the credit for it. I find so many great recipes on her site, have tried several of them, and like to share the ones I love the most.
Banana Bread
Ingredients
- 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
- 1/3 cup melted butter
- 1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- Pinch of salt
- 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last and mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4×8 (I’ve used 9×5) inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.
Okay, now here are the changes that you can make!
Instead of butter use plain, unsweetened applesauce.
Instead of sugar use Splenda or another sugar substitute.
Instead of regular eggs, you can use eggbeaters or egg whites.
These changes can be used in any recipe or boxed cake mix. I’ve even used just a regular cake mix and a can of pumpkin to make brownies!
You can even use fruit purees as a fat substitute like prune, pumpkin, and sweet potato. I would search what the ratios would be though because I believe that they’re not always a one to one exchange.
These are a few simple changes that you can make to lower the calories in your recipes and make them a bit healthier for your family. And trust me…. They’ll never know!
