Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Oatmeal Banana Bread Bars with a Swirl

My friend Miranda made some banana bread with Nutella swirl from The Nutritious Kitchen and raved about the recipe, so Maggie and I decided to bake some a couple of weeks ago. Okay, I lied, it was over a month ago. I'm the worst at updating. 
Anyway, we had a minor problem: we don't have bread pans. So, what was supposed to be banana bread turned more into banana bread bars, which were just as good, if not better. 
We made a couple of changes to the recipe by using almond meal in place of half of the oat flour, honey instead of maple syrup, and coconut oil instead of canola oil.
Also, instead of Nutella, we decided to do a little experiment and swirl almond butter into 1/3, peanut butter into 1/3 and cookie butter into 1/3, to do a little taste test, which they all passed.
They're the bomb.com and you don't have to feel too guilty about eating them.
p.s. I buy my almond meal from Trader Joe's. It may seem like an unnecessary purchase, and I was initially hesitant to buy it, but I've ended up using it a lot! It gives your treats a nuttier texture and takes them to the next level, so promise me you'll try it at least once?
p.p.s If you don't have oat flour on hand, just put regular oats in a food processor until its flour-like in consistency and voila! Oat flour.
 
Oatmeal Banana Bread Bars with a Swirl
Adapted from The Nutritious Kitchen

Ingredients:
1 cup oat flour
1 cup almond meal
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
3 slightly browned bananas, mashed
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp coconut oil
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
2 Tbsp raw oats
4 Tbsp of your choice of spread! (Almond butter, peanut butter, cookie butter, Nutella, etc.) ;)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Mix oat flour, almond meal, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon in a bowl and set aside.
3. Mix bananas, vanilla, coconut oil, Greek yogurt, honey and almond milk in a separate bowl.
4. Mix wet ingredients into the dry and stir until combined.
5. Spray a ___ pan with cooking spray. Add the mixture to the pan and flatten out with a spatula.
6. Swirl in the spread of your choice!
7. Sprinkle raw oats on top.
8. Bake for ~20 minutes, but keep an eye on them! To be honest I can't remember exactly how long we baked them for, so just wait for the smell and test with a toothpick
And yes, they smelled so good that we couldn't wait to eat them. Hence, the two missing bars from all of these pictures. Sorry. (not really)

2 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness this makes me want to go whip up some banana bread right now!! Love your incorporation of almond meal into the recipe, I will have to try out your substitutions! Oh and cookie butter?! Yes please, cookie butter swirl banana bread is so going down next time I make these! The bars came out so cute too! Thanks for linking back to my original recipe!
    -Selena

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  2. Kels this looks so good - I'll have to do some serious baking and cooking when I go home for Easter and see if I can make these look as tasty as yours! Keep up the posts I love reading them!

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