Guest post from Michelle of The Willing Cook
I have a confession to make. I don’t always come up with my own recipes. I love to peruse magazines and take regular favorites and make them allergy-friendly for my family.
One of my inspirations is Cooking Light magazine. The October issue featured some marvelous quick bread recipes that immediately sucked me in.
I knew I had to start experimenting. So, I did. And, guess what? You are now the beneficiary of said experiment. Just think: a gluten-free banana bread with an ever so wonderful dairy-free (& nut free if you use Sunbutter) “Nutella”.
YUM!
Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free Chocolate Almond Banana Bread
{free of gluten, dairy, nuts**, and more}
Ingredients for Chocolate Almond “Nutella”
- 1 cup almond butter (**For a nut-free bread, use Sunbutter sunflower seed spread that is free of peanuts & treenuts.)
- 1/2 cup cocoa
- 6 Tbsp maple syrup
- 4 Tbsp allowed oil (grapeseed, coconut, butter, shortening)
- 1/2 – 1 cup allowed milk (cow, almond, rice, soy, etc.)
- Whisk together all the above ingredients together in a sauce pan over low heat until smooth (be careful because it can scorch easily).
- Add more milk as (necessary) until it becomes a creamy consistency. I added pretty close to 1 cup of milk.
- Whisk frequently until you achieve the desired “nutella” consistency.
Ingredients for Banana Bread
2 eggs (or EnerG egg replacer = 3 tsp powder + 4 Tbsp water)
2 bananas
6 Tbsp oil
2/3 cup buttermilk (add 1 Tbsp vinegar to dairy-free milk to make a DF buttermilk; let stand 5 minutes)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cup brown rice flour
3/4 cup tapioca flour
1/2 tsp guar gum (or xantham gum)
1 1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup chopped or slivered almonds, optional (other suggestions: coconut, dried fruit, sunflower seeds)
Directions (do this while the chocolate almond mixture is heating up):
- In a large bowl, whisk eggs or EnerG egg replacer.
- Add the bananas and mix together until smooth.
- Add in the oil and buttermilk; mix until smooth.
- Add in the sugar and mix again.
- Throw all the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. (You can mix them in a separate bowl first if you want. I never do.) Mix until just combined.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cut parchment paper the size of a loaf pan and place in pan.
- Pour half the batter into the parchment-lined loaf pan. Pour a thin layer of the chocolate almond sauce over the batter (don’t use all the sauce because you’ll need to drizzle it on top of the bread). Spread the rest of the batter over the chocolate almond sauce.
- With a knife or toothpick, gently swirl the batter so that you’re swirling the chocolate almond sauce throughout the bread. Don’t go crazy with this, just give it some good swirling.
- Sprinkle batter with chopped or slivered almonds (or coconut, dried fruit, etc.)
- Bake for 35 minutes and check for doneness with a toothpick; add on minutes as needed, only a few at a time.
When baking is complete, remove from oven and allow to cool in the loaf pan for about 10 minutes. Remove the bread from the pan by picking up the sides of the parchment paper and allow to cool completely.
Now it’s time to drizzle on all that chocolate goodness!
Make sure your chocolate almond sauce is still smooth; heat up if necessary. Slowly drizzle on the desired amount of chocolate almond sauce over the bread with a spoon. Allow the chocolate to set before cutting into the bread.
Enjoy!
Michelle is blessed to stay home with her three children (ages 10, 7, and 4), while her husband works to provide. When she’s not experimenting with allergy-friendly meals, she’s blogging about it at The Willing Cook. Through the Willing Cook, her hope is that you gain peace of mind in your kitchen (and your pocket book) and are able to serve those you love who suffer with food allergies.
What a delicious quick bread, and how lovely that it is so versatile and allergy friendly!
Oh wow, that looks amazing! My husband would definitely love a loaf of this bread.
Crystal, thank you so much for including these allergy-friendly recipe posts lately! I just cannot tell you what a fun blessing it is to get on here and be surprised by a great new recipe my kiddos will actually be able to eat! Love the nutella with sunbutter idea, we’ll be trying that very soon :o)
Traci,
I am so glad to hear that the recent allergy-friendly recipe posts have been a blessing to you and your family! I agree with you, I always love to be surprised by one myself. If you ever need any other food allergy & kid-friendly recipes, don’t hesitate to let me know. I have quite a few up my sleeve 🙂 and, well, on my website too.
Enjoy!
Michelle
Oh yay! I’m so thankful that you’re finding them to be helpful to you. I’m so grateful that Michelle has been willing to share here!
Right back to ya, Crystal 🙂 I’ve been so grateful that you have allowed me to share here!
This sounds amazing. I’m going to play with this to try to make it Paleo-friendly (almond flour, coconut flour…). My roommate is very wary of anything I make, but I’m pretty sure Nutella runs in her blood, so she will be excited to try this one!
Ooohhh, I’d love to know how you make it Paleo-friendly. I know a lot of Paleo folks. Come back here and let me know or stop over to my blog and leave a comment when I put up the link back here to the recipe (next week). I know a lot of my readers would really be interested in it. Thanks!!!
Looks tasty! Though I think that an “allergy free” recipe that contains nuts is a bit of an oxymoron! Around here, almost all churches and schools are nut-free because that is one of the most common and fatal allergies.
Sorry, I missed where you said Sunbutter. However, many people dealing with nut allergies will skip this recipe because of the title.
I was going to point you to the Sunbutter alternative. It’s a hard decision to make….do you include the word “Almond” because it’s a main ingredient in the “nutella” and hope that people will see the substitute with Sunbutter, or exclude it? Obviously, I left it in. I can just hope that the people who would like to try the recipe, but have a tree nut allergy, will know to make the needed substitutions.
I’m glad that you freely share that you did not “invent” the recipe! I think way too many people take a recipe, change a few ingredients, and call it their own. Thanks for letting us know where you got it!
Amy,
I’d wager to guess most cooks don’t just magically make up their recipe out of no where. Some of us might unintentionally think that we have, but we usually get our inspiration elsewhere. I find wonderful “regular” recipes all the time and convince myself that I need to make an allergy-friendly version.
Michelle
I would love to have a link to the regular version of this recipe 🙂 I’m wondering if I can use whole wheat/all purpose flour in place of the other ones and I have no idea what guar gum is and I don’t have any cream of tartar – can I use baking soda??
just found what I think is the original recipe online if anyone else is interested 🙂
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-hazelnut-banana-bread-50400000123581/
Thanks so much for digging that up!
Thanks, Sarah, for finding that recipe! I think I meant to link that, but forgot :0 Guar gum is an ingredient used in gluten-free flours to help them corporate a little more like regular wheat flour. In your case, I’d definitely use whole wheat flour. As far as cream of tartar goes, I use it as a substitute for baking powder because my husband is allergic to corn (an ingredient in traditional baking powder). Leave out the cream of tart, decrease the baking soda to 3/4 tsp and add in 1 tsp baking powder. Did you follow me at all? Or, better yet, follow the original recipe 🙂
haha, thanks! i have it in the oven right now – I’ll let you know how it turns out 🙂 We’re fortunate to not have a ton of food allergies in our family (although LOTS of non-food-related ones!). Some of the allergy free recipes posted always look so tasty, but I get all muddled up by the special ingredients.
Ooh..I love a girl who gets right to it! 🙂 I hope it turns out fantastic and would love to hear about it!
Okay, just wanted to come back and make a note that this is an AWESOME recipe. Sooo moist and delicious, even without the nuts & additional sauce on top. Seriously. So. Good.
And I don’t even LIKE bananas.
Yay! Thanks for the feedback! Did you make the original recipe? What changes did you make to it? I’m so glad to hear it turned out fantastic for you!
“Allergy Free” except for those of us that are deathly allergic to bananas!
That’s true, Jessica. There are those uncommon allergens out there. My husband has a few of them, so I understand your pain. I think you could easily swap the bananas out for pumpkin or apple sauce, but cut back a bit on the other liquids (oil, buttermilk). I hope that you can make some slight changes and enjoy this anyway!
Thanks for the awesome ideas Michelle!
You’re very welcome! Glad to help.