I woke up to such a dark and gloomy day, the thick layer of fog has covered the mountains and you can almost hear the silence. It just started to snow so hopefully that will brighten up the day a little bit and chase that fog away… Tomorrow is 1st day of March and even if I believe we will still have some snow and maybe even a lot, at least we know that after that last round of snow and winter, the spring is on its way! Are you looking forward to spring? Unless of course you live in a place where is summer now! 🙂 I am really a kind of person who loves all seasons, never been one of those who for example openly dislike winter because it’s cold or wet, I like to dress in cozy jumpers and have a cup of hot tea or hot chocolate while it’s freezing cold outside and I like to have long walks in the snow so winter never really bothers me. But when you live in a place where the winter is very long and you have months and months of snow, than you slowly start to dream about the spring and its smells, colors and warmth.
One thing that makes a day like today much much better is chocolate of course! Specially if it’s in the form of creamy, delicious and healthy homemade “nutella” and even more so when you have a slice of warm banana bread filled with that yummy chocolate hazelnut spread, yum!
Of course you can make this banana bread with any chocolate-hazelnut spread you prefer or even with real nutella if you want but if you want to keep this a healthier recipe but still enjoy all that wonderful creamy chocolate, than I suggest you either make your own or buy one in health food stores where you’ll know that it contains more good ingredients like large percentage of hazelnuts, real cacao and natural sweeteners and not loads of refined sugar and additives that you can’t even pronounce.
To read more about this and to see how you can easily make your own (but you will need a food processor for that and the stronger it is, the creamier “nutella” you will get), see here as I already wrotte about that on the blog. I mean, if occasionally you eat a spoon or two of the “real nutella” nothing bad will happen to you but I know how that goes as I’ve been there, a spoon becomes two, two becomes three, three becomes half jar in no time! And than when you buy it regularly, you will eat it regulary so if you want to cut down the refined sugar, than this is one of many ways you can do that. Start making your own chocolate-hazelnut spread so you won’t have to worry if you had a spoon too many! 😉
- 1 cup spelt flour
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- pinch of salt
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ½ cup maple or agave syrup
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup almond milk (or other)
- 3 ripe bananas, mashed
- ½ cup homemade "nutella"
- Note: 1 cup = 250 ml
- To make your own homemade"nutella", see the recipe here.
- Preheat oven to 180 C (356 F) and grease bread baking pan.
- In a large mixing bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt and stir with a wooden spoon.
- Add cinnamon, maple or agave syrup, eggs and almond milk and stir well until it's all combined.
- Cut the bananas and mash them until they are creamy.
- Add the mashed bananas to the mixture and stir until is all combined.
- Pour half of the mixture into prepared bread pan.
- Using a spoon spread equally ½ cup of homemade "nutella" on the center of the bread mixture.
- Pour the other half of the banana bread mixture on top of the "nutella" spread.
- Bake on 180 C (356 F) for about 50 minutes or until the tester comes out clean (ignore the chocolate spread on the tester or knife as that will stay creamy even when the bread is baked)
- Note: Be careful not to fill up the baking pan till the top as the banana bread will rise when baking.
- Note: You can cover the top of the banana bread with a parchment paper for the last 20 minutes of baking or when you see that the color is becoming too brown.
- Note: You can keep the bread for a day or two on room temperature and if there is any left after that, than store it in the fridge. It's delicious and moist even after few days in the fridge.
I hope you will enjoy this recipe (that I made three times in the last week or so to get it right how I like it!) and if it you think you would want more chocolate that in the recipe, than just use that other half of “nutella” cup after baking and spread it on warm banana bread slices. So delicious! 🙂
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What a great recipe Lily! I love that it is all refined sugar free.. And who can say no to homemade nutella?!!well done, my friend 🙂
Thank you so much dear Aysegul, very sweet of you! 🙂