Oatmeal Banana (or blueberry) Bread

Today was a nice, balmy 10F degrees outside. Perfect temperature outside to do some baking (especially since I had some bananas on the counter that needed to be used, frozen, or thrown away). I found a recipe for some banana muffins a few weeks ago that I've been dying to try! For original recipe and post Go Here. In the original post she made muffins. I hate cleaning muffin tins and I didn't have any liners on hand so I made a loaf of banana bread instead.

Growing up it was not uncommon for my dad to be in the kitchen right along with my mom or even INSTEAD of my mom. This left me with the (unrealistic in my life) expectation that my husband would be there with me. A couple years ago my parents bought him some really kick butt knives for Christmas that he really likes using. Those knives have enabled me to coerce him into the kitchen to help me out a couple of times. He has officially become my unofficial nut chopper. That is code for he doesn't know this yet.

The thing I love about this recipe is that it only requires 7 ingredients (8 if you add nuts like I did) and no flour.

A little of this

Take these:
2 1/2 C. of old fashioned oats
2 eggs
2 bananas (very ripe)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp of baking soda
3/4 C. of sugar
1 C. plain greek yogurt
1 C. of chopped nuts (I used pecans)



Do this:
1. Preheat the oven to 350* grease loaf pan.
2. I blended the oats in the food processor before I added the rest of the ingredients until they were a coarse powder.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients (except for the nuts that the hubs was chopping while I mixed the rest of the ingredients).
4. Once the rest of the ingredients are well mixed add the nuts and pulse it in the food processor just until they are mixed in.
5. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan (next time I would probably try to split it because it was a little too full) and bake for about 40 minutes* or until a poke test comes out clean.

*I adjusted the time and temp from the original post since I was not making muffins

Warm delicious-ness

The bread is so good and would be easy to adapt into a Gluten-free recipe if needed. Now I just need to freeze some so I can take it with me to work! Also I think the muffin version of this would be perfect to grab and go... next time!

*Alright peeps... A little update. Today I wanted to make a batch of this that I could freeze and take to work but I didn't have bananas! Went to the store hoping to find some ripe ones and totally struck out! What I did find were some frozen blueberries that I decided to try instead. They turned out delicious!! So if you'd like, follow the above recipe but replace the bananas with 6 oz. of blueberries and probably omit the nuts. Just a little spin on an already great recipe. Equally healthy and satisfying for a grab and go breakfast!