set it free

alice’s tea cup recipe | sue’s banana bread | technique modification | ingredient substitution

by set free, i mean veganize and gluten-free-ize — if gluten-free-ize could ever be a new vocabulary word in the american english dictionary.

this is an egg-free, dairy-free, gluten-free dessert bread.

many banana bread recipes exist, but i must say this is the one banana bread recipe i repeatedly go to. there is just something about how the sugar slow cooks in the oven with this recipe.

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the sugar crisps up on top. and i like it this way.

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dare i say this recipe turned out better than when i used to use eggs and regular all-purpose flour? and too many bananas? the mixture would rise up uneven and eventually spill over onto my oven base. yes, i had to clean and scrub up the mess back then.

no problems this time with the ingredient substitutions below!

technique modifications:

• instead of mashing the bananas by hand, bananas were sliced and tossed into a stand mixer as a last step prior to heating in the oven.

• a stand mixer was used with the flat beater attachment, not the metal wire whip attachment. it is the flat beater that mashes the bananas well.

ingredient substitutions:

• i never use vegetable oil. i shun inexpensive, unhealthy oils. i bake with olive oil (100% italian organic extra virgin olive oil) and that is exactly what i did for this recipe. as stated in a previous blog, olive oil is one of my mainstays for its load of disease-fighting antioxidants. you cannot even tell it is in there. and you get all of the benefits. it keeps baked goods moist for longer too.

• gluten-free flour, which tastes just the same and rises just as well as all-purpose flour, was used to gluten-free-ize the bread.

• bob’s red mill gluten-free vegan egg replacer is my favorite egg substitute in baked goods. it binds and is oh so wonderful. this egg replacer was substituted for the eggs in the recipe — a direct one-to-one replacement.

• i used less bananas than what was called for. why? because a large banana is quite big compared to a medium banana. this recipe does not specify volume or weight, but i have made this recipe enough times to know it was fine to scale back.

• upon serving, a generous dollop of coco whip was added. triple vanilla creamy ice cream on top would have tasted just as good.

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gluten-free-ize. it is a new vocab word.

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note:

• if you refer to sue’s recipe in alice’s tea cup cookbook, you will notice i left a word out of the title in the above blog description. why? there is sin in the original title. i purified the title.