blueberry-banana bread

A healthier, lighter, and totally new take on the long-famous KONA INN BANANA BREAD. I’ve been happily making the original version since July of 1985 out of The Fanny Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham, but it needed updating. My tender, tasty loaf is half the sugar, half the fat, half the white flour, but not half the flavor! Smaller slices also help cut calories, too--if you can do it! I’ve added in a food processor to ease the mixing for the liquid ingredients, but feel free to use a mixer or do the whole shebang by hand if you’ve good strong arms and plenty of time. Marion recommends spreading a little cream cheese on top of your slice; I agree.

Prep Time15

Cook Time1

Cooling1

Course: Snack

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Banana, Bread

Author: More Time at the Table/Alyce Morgan

Equipment

9x5x3 loaf pan

Ingredients

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
¼ cup cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 generous teaspoon kosher salt
5 medium ripe bananas, peeled
2 large eggs
4 egg whites
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup (1 stick) salted butter, softened
4 ounces (1/2 cup) unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Instructions

Grease and flour a 9x5x3 baking pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place rack at center.
Mix the dry ingredients (flours, cornmeal, baking soda, and salt) in a medium mixing bowl and set aside.
Add the bananas, eggs, egg whites, sugar, butter, and applesauce to the bowl of food processor fitted with a steel blade. Pulse several times until the mixture is well-combined, but thick and chunky; it needn’t be smooth.
Spoon the banana mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients and gently mix everything together by hand until just combined. Stir in the blueberries.
Pour into prepared pan. Bake 60-70 minutes or until a skewer inserted at the center of the bread comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool in pan for 5 minutes; turn out onto a rack and cool completely--at least an hour.

Notes

The original recipe includes 1 cup chopped walnuts; please add them back in if you'd like. This makes a large, deep loaf. You can also divide it between two smaller loaf pans (8x4) or even make muffins. Bake an 8x4 loaf 40-45 min. and muffins 15-20 minutes. You can replace the 4 egg whites with 2 more eggs for a total of 4 whole eggs if need be. Copyright Alyce Morgan, 2019. All rights reserved.