Happy New Year! Guilt-Free Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Well, we're nearly a week into 2014 and I'd say it's off to a pretty good start so far.  Our new house now has drywall, my first week back to work after the Christmas holiday has been insanely busy, and my cousin got married yesterday which was beautiful and lots of fun.

We rang in the new year at my friend Kayla's house, which doubled as a surprise birthday party for her dad, which was a blast.  Harlee almost outlived me!  I was beat, he was running around with noisemakers until past midnight, and was wide awake the whole way home!  This kid not only inherited my night owl characteristic, but I think he outright stole it from me...

Then this threat came in for another "snowpocolypse" with blizzard-like conditions and life-threatening situations, etc. etc.  While everyone else was stocking up on bread, eggs, and milk, I battled the insanity of the stores for bananas and other assortment of fruits (which I was out of anyway).  What's the deal with bread, eggs, and milk anyway?  Those are the first items to go when there's a threat of a blizzard or terrible weather conditions.  Wouldn't you want to stock up on non-perishables like canned goods or something?  Thanks to our diet change, bread and milk aren't things we stock our shelves with anyway, and eggs are something we're stocked up on regardless, so all I needed to worry about were things we were out of, in the event that we get snowed in - it'd be nice to have some extra fruit in the house.  I'm glad I did, too, because those bananas came in handy for this recipe I'm about to share.

Luckily the bad weather held off until this (Sunday) morning, so the wedding and reception were safe, and we had a great time celebrating Mike and Theresa's marriage until the snow started coming down later that night and we decided to head home.

And this morning there was probably about 4-5 inches of snow on the ground.  It's still coming down, so it'll wind up being deeper I'm sure, but doesn't seem like the blizzard they warned us about.  But still, the weather stations are still saying to stay put, so fine, we'll stay put.  And use one of those bananas I had bought in preparation for this blizzard to make this delicious peanut butter banana breakfast bread!

There are two things I'm going to tweak next time - one less egg (I originally used 3), and use a much riper banana.  I only like to eat green bananas, so that's what I had on hand since I just bought them, so it didn't provide that signature banana flavor you'd expect in a banana bread, but it was still good.  Only other thing was it was almost too dense, so one less egg should work better.  But, that being said, this was still awesome and delicious.  I sliced a piece in half and slathered some butter on it along with some of Kayla's organic strawberry jalapeno jelly and my, my, my it was soooo good.  Great way to start this snow day!

This recipe was adapted from the Paleo Breakfast Bread recipe from Elana's Pantry but since I didn't have almond butter I had to change it, and since I was changing it I figured I'd change it even more, and ta-da, this is what I got!


Here's how it goes:

1 cup natural, unsweetened peanut butter
1 ripe banana
2 eggs
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp stevia
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat  oven to 325 degrees.

With a hand mixer, blend the peanut butter with the banana.  Add in the eggs, honey, and stevia and mix until smooth.  Mix in the salt and baking soda.

Transfer the thick batter to a greased (either with coconut oil or butter) 8x8" baking dish and bake for 15-25 min or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.  Cut, serve, and enjoy!

And stay tuned, I'll make this again once my bananas turn brown and let you know how my modifications go.  But for now, enjoy this!  It's pretty darn good!