VeggieDag Thursday: Banana Malt Bread

When life gives you brown bananas, you make Banana Malt Bread.

I adapted this recipe, almost intact, from Easy Vegan Banana Bread by Nora Cooks Vegan but with a beery twist: for the sweetness, a barley malt substitution à la beer-food writer Melissa Cole. Have your beer and eat it too.

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RECIPE

• INGREDIENTS
  • 2-3 medium overripe bananas
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar
  • 1/3 cup barley malt syrup
  • 1/3 cup extra virgin oil oil
  • 2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
  • 5 tablespoons water
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup garbanzo flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts
  
  
  
  
  
• PROCEDURE
  1. 1) Preheat the oven to 350 °F.
  
  
  2. 2) Lightly oil a 9-inch loaf pan and arrange a strip of parchment paper width-wise along the center, with just a bit hanging out over each side.
  
  
  3. 3) Make two flax 'eggs.' Use a coffee grinder or mortar-and-pestle to grind the seeds. In a bowl, mix together the ground flaxseed meal with six tablespoons of water. Chill in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to set up and thicken.
  
  
  4. 4) Mash peeled bananas in bowl.
  
  
  5. 5) Add malt syrup, brown sugar, oil, and vanilla to bowl. Mix well.
  
  
  6. 6) Add the flour to the bowl. Mix well. Add baking soda, nutmeg, salt, and reserved flax 'eggs.' Mix well.
  
  
  7. 7) Fold in walnuts.
  
  
  8. 8) Spoon the batter into loaf pan. Cover with aluminum foil.
  
  
  9. 9) Bake, covered, for 30 minutes.
  
  
  10. 10) Remove aluminum foil and return loaf to oven, baking for additional ~20 minutes. Test for doneness by inserting a toothpick or fork tine into the center. If it comes out easily and clean, it's done. Don't burn the top!
  
  
  11. 11) Remove from the oven and allow the loaf to cool before removing it from the pan.
  
  
  12. 12) Slice and serve.

VeggieDag Thursday is an occasional Thursday post
on an animal-free diet and on environmental and ecological issues.

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• Original (unmodifed) recipe at Nora Cooks Vegan: Easy Vegan Banana Bread
• Magnificent Malt Loaf, from Melissa Cole's beer-cookbook, The Beer Kitchen.
• You can also use browned bananas to make a Banana-Lemon Spread for toast. Recipe: YFGF.
• If your bananas go brown before you're prepared to cook with them, freeze them. Peel the bananas and store them in the freezer in zip-lock plastic baggies.


• Why the name VeggieDag Thursday? Here.
• Read all the posts: here. Follow on Twitter with hashtag: #VeggieDag.
• Suggestions and submissions from chefs, writers, and home-cooks welcomed! Contact me here.


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