Peanut Butter Banana Bread

(Anna... well Cooking Light... but Anna wrote this)

Recently I got Cooking Light’s “readers top recipes” edition, which when I bought it I didn’t realize that it’s really a little cookbook with some pretty great recipes. What I enjoy about Cooking Light is that the recipes are mostly healthy without skimping a lot on ingredients, like they don't tell you only spray the Pam 3 times and if you do more than you're a fatty (or is it just me who thinks "light" recipes are calling me chubby? yea? ok..). And they give the serving size and nutrition information so you realize how much is serving is actually supposed to be.

Anyways, I had a lot of bananas that were not going to get eaten so Banana Bread seemed like a great idea, and peanut butter and bananas are pretty much made for each other so this recipe was a good one to try out. The original recipe called for flaxseed and allspice, I left both out… didn’t have flaxseed and was too lazy to grind up some allspice and it was still very tasty. Also you’ll notice I don’t have a loaf pan, so the bread is a little bit of a wonky shape… but whatev’s… it was still good.

Bread:

1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana

1/3 cup plain fat free yogurt

1/3 cup creamy peanut butter

3 tbsp butter, melted

2 large eggs

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tbsp chopped peanuts

Glaze:

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1 tbsp low fat milk

1 tbsp creamy peanut butter

Heat oven to 350

for bread: combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl; beat at medium speed. Add granulated and brown sugars, beat well

Combine flour and the rest of the dry ingredients except for the peanuts. Add flour mixture to banana mixture and beat until just blended. Add peanuts. Pour batter into loaf pan coated with cooking spray (butter would be glorious for this too). Bake at 350 for 1 hr and 5 min or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack, till you can handle it then take out of pan and let cool.

For glaze: combine powdered sugar, milk and peanut butter in small bowl and drizzle over cooled bread.

makes 16 servings at 190 calories a slice :) 

Next time I might try adding nutella instead of peanut butter, cause really when bananas aren’t all about peanut butter they are about nutella.

And also maybe swap the butter for applesauce for less calories and see how that turns out.