Blueberry, cardamon & lemon banana bread - gluten & refined sugar free

I am a freak for banana bread. I know...I have posted a bunch of recipes for banana bread before. The reason this one gets to be posted is simply because it tastes good, it's soft and moist, it contains yummy blueberries combined with zingy lemon zest and fragrant cardamon which previous recipes haven't and because it's both devoid of gluten and refined sugar! Aren't those reason enough?

So the main lesson I have learned with banana bread is that you need to use overly ripe bananas to get that real banana taste coming through. Also you need to hold back on other spices as they can easily over power the delicate banana flavour. This is always tricky for me as I love to over season.

If you are allergic to nuts just skip!

If your vegan replace the ghee with more coconut oil.

If you want to be adventurous exchange or even just add some chopped chocolate.

Blueberry, cardamon & lemon banana bread - gluten & refined sugar free

Ingredients

3 eggs

3 medium/large or 4 small ripe bananas (the darker, with black spots the better!)

70g //0.5 cup blueberries (frozen, thawed are perfectly fine)

70g // 0.5 cup apple sauce

70g // 0.5 cup milk (plant or dairy)

1.5 tbsp coconut oil, melted

25g ghee/ butter melted

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

300g/ / 2 cups oat flour** (you could opt for exchanging 1 dl of the oat flour with 1dl nut, rice or buckwheat flour)

70g // 0.5 cup fresh ground flax seed (to make: whizz in a blend or kitchen machine)

50g // 1/3 cup walnuts or pecans

1 tsp fresh ground cardamom

zest from one organic lemon (unwaxed!)

I bet adding some poppyseed to the dough would make it really yummy.

** to be sure you bake gluten free you need to make sure that the oats you buy to make your own flour or the ready made oat flour you buy is gluten free.

Instrcutions

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C.

2. Whisk the eggs.

3. Add the melted coconut oil and butter to the eggs mix.

4. Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and mix, then slowly add to the egg mix.

5. Mash the banana add to the dough along with the lemon zest, apple sauce and milk.

6. Now add the nuts. Mix.

7. Carefully fold in the blueberries (if they were frozen and have thawed they tend to give off a lot of color and will leave you with a blue looking bread if you blend to vigorously).

8. Line a bread of cake form with baking paper or grease it and dust with your flour of choice (I used corn). Then slowly pour in the dough.

9. Bake the bread in the middle of the oven for approx. 45min-1hour, depending on your oven. If you think the bread starts to look overly brown on top then cover the form with aluminium foil.

I am really bad at letting cakes and cookies cool down till I dig in, but try to allow some cooling as cutting this bad boy too soon will not only disfigure the loaf it will also not bring you the true flavour that comes through once it is cooled.

I love to toast a slice of the banana bread and spread nut butter on top.