Guest Post: Pumpkin Banana Chocolate Loaf

-Laura @ Live.Laugh.Run.Repeat

I am not a baker, nor do I play one in my kitchen. I really don’t have the patience to bake – I like cooking as for the most part you can wing it and be more haphazard with it. Baking is too exact and I really don’t have a lot of patience to wait for things to be done. When I came across this recipe in Runners World, I thought I would try it as it was something good to have on hand as a snack, specifically post-workout. Plus, it really wasn’t labour intensive as far as baking goes.

The original recipe included 3 cups of sugar! White flour! Though no baker, I thought I could do better. I have been tweaking around with the recipe a bit and here is the latest..

Pumpkin Banana Chocolate Loaf

Dry Ingredients:

3 ¼ whole wheat flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2.5 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup of semi-sweet mini chocolate chips

Wet Ingredients:

3 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
2/3 cup water
2 cups canned, plain pumpkin
1 mashed ripe banana

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well. In a separate bowl, slightly beat the eggs with a fork or wire whisk. Add the remaining wet ingredients to the eggs and stir well.

Gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir just until evenly mixed. Fold in chocolate chips.

Coat 2 bread pans evenly with cooking spray. Pour half of the mixture into each pan.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a knife comes out clean from the bread.

See – this is where that patience thing comes in - one loaf was cooked in a non-stick pan (right), the other in glass (left). The glass one needed more time to cool but I had things to do and sort of forced it out of the pan:

Oh well, I got to eat the stuff leftover in the pan!

I know that you can do even more substitutions but even with these few modifications, the overall count of the one ENTIRE loaf went from almost 4000 calories to just over 2000 calories (approximate using SparkRecipes). This freezes really well and it is a very dense bread because of the whole wheat flour so a small piece is filling. Especially if you heat it up. Mmmmm.

Enjoy!

Thanks Jaime for letting me babble on and contribute to your awesome blog.

Laura