Sugar-Free Banana Bread

Banana bread has to be one of my favourite types of loaf cake. I love how moist the cake is and that you can add in pretty much anything you like such as chocolate, dried fruit or nuts. Instead of using sugar in this recipe, I replaced the ingredient with dates. Medjool dates are the best for baking, however I used the dried, stoned dates by Whitworths which worked fine as long as I had let them soak in some water for a while. Although the title of this post says that they're sugar-free, my dark chocolate chip loaf obviously isn't, however, my walnut version is. 

Ingredients
- 3 ripe bananas
- 175g ground almonds
- 150g self raising flour 
- 75g butter
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 medjool dates (72g stoned dates)
- 50g of optional dried fruit, nuts, chocolate etc.
- Handful of flaked almonds (Optional)

Method
1) Remove any stones and place dates in a bowl of water if they're hard.
2) Mix the ground almonds, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg.
3) Add in any optional extras. 
4) Melt the butter in the oven on gas mark 4 in an oven proof dish or mug. 
5) Mash the dates to form a paste and add the bananas and mash together. 
6) Add the vanilla to the mashed banana and dates.
7) Remove the melted butter from the oven and add to the banana mixture. 
8) Pour the wet and dry mixture together and combine. 
9) Evenly distribute the banana bread batter between two loaf tins and sprinkle with a handful of flaked almonds or any other extra you wish (I used chopped walnuts on one and dark chocolate chips on the other).
10) Bake for 30-35 minutes. Poke with a sharp knife or cocktail stick and remove, if clean, the loafs are cooked. 
11) Remove from the tins and place on a cooling rack. 
12) Let the loafs cool before slicing. 

I hope you enjoyed this recipe post, stay around for another next Sunday! :) 

Becky x