It's a big call, but I'm gonna make it. Srsly. This is probably the best thing I've scoffed down in a long while. Banana bread, forever my favourite, but with crunchy walnuts and delicious choc chunks and just best texture, the best sweetness, the best banana-ness... guys, I just can't even explain how perfect this loaf turned out. Get it. Tag me. Love ya.

What you need:

5 ripe bananas
1 cup almond milk
2 cups buckwheat flour
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 tsp bi carb soda
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup walnuts, chopped
2/3 cup choc chunks, or roughly chopped chocolate

What you need to do:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Pop the five bananas and almond milk into a blender and blend until smooth. Transfer to a big bowl, add the maple syrup and cinnamon and stir. Add the buckwheat flour and bi carb soda and mix until JUST combined. Add the walnuts and choccy, and fold through. Transfer into a greased/lined loaf pan; note this makes a big loaf, so depending on the size of your loaf pan you may have a little leftover batter. I did, and so I poured the leftovers into a muffin pan and ended up with a banana bread loaf plus four divine little muffins. Winner. Pop into the oven for 55-60 mins, until the top is browned up and a knife comes out mostly clean. Allow to cool a little bit, but not too much because this, warm from the oven, equals divine. Also divine the next day. Just a winner all round.

5 comments
Don't let the maple in the title fool you: these cookies are the real deal, full of sugar and all the other good things. The maple just lends a really lovely fragrant sweetness to them; you know, as maple does. But, they are made with wholesome buckwheat flour, as well as maybe half the amount of sugar your average cookie has, making these the perfect level of decadent and cookie-craving-fulfilling but not too sickening. Get amongst it! Tag me if you make them! Love u!
What you need:

2 1/4 cups buckwheat flour (or other kind of flour (except for coconut flour, don't do that). Let me know if you try any other flours out and how they work for you!)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup + 2 tblsp almond milk
3/4 cup raw sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup

1 cup vegan choc chunks, roughly chopped

What you need to do:

Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together. In a separate large bowl, mix the oil, almond milk, sugar and maple all together until well combined. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mix until just combined; add the roughly chopped chocolate and stir until mixed through evenly. Roll the cookies out into balls and onto two parchment paper lined trays; it should make about 12 cookie balls, spread across the two separate trays. Pop the trays in the freezer for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius 10 mins before taking the trays out of the freezer. Bake for 12 minutes, then open the oven and lift the cookie tray up a couple of inches and let it drop (aka pan banging*). Close the oven door and bake for 4 more minutes, pan bang again, bake for 4 more minutes and then remove from the oven when the edges are starting to become golden. Leave to cool completely.

*Pan banging, a la Sarah Kieffer: once the cookies start to puff up in the oven, you bang the cookie tray on the oven rack to deflate them, then let them puff again for a few minutes and bang again, and then once again a few minutes later. This gives them those glorious crinkles and cracks.
PS, smooshing vegan ice cream in between two of them? Not at all a bad idea.
1 comments