One year and one month! Vegan banana bread repost.

We're a month past Baby Bear's first birthday so I decided it's about time to post some of his birthday photos.

We had a fairly low-key party with some snacks, pizza for dinner and of course birthday cake made completely from scratch by yours truly.

Yay! Balloons!

Pardon the mess please.

All natural, all "healthy".

The unhealthy part of the day.

At the end of the day our lovebug was spoilt rotten.

Our plan for the day was really just to make everything as fun and simple as possible while also keeping the cake and most snacks baby appropriate. To us that meant a "healthy" cake, vegetables on the pizza and of course some delicious cucumber and tomatoes to snack on. Preferably I would have made the pizza dough from scratch with wholegrain spelt flour but I sadly ran out of time so we had to bust out some pizza kits instead. Luckily the most important thing, the cake obviously, was a success. It was my first time ever baking and decorating a birthday cake without any help and I'm pretty proud of the results. I used my own recipe for vegan banana bread, added some fifteen minute chia-raspberry jam and iced the cake with a mix of mascarpone, vanilla and organic, no sugar added applesauce.

Egg-free banana bread. 

Ingredients: 

• Two tablespoons flaxseeds soaked in six tablespoons water for at least fifteen minutes 
• Four small bananas 
• Two tablespoons coconut oil 
• Three tablespoons maple syrup (or honey if you're not vegan)
• One and a half cups flour (I used wholegrain spelt flour this time) 
• One and a half teaspoon baking powder 
• One quarter teaspoon baking soda 
• One quarter teaspoon salt 
• Optional: half a cup of add-ins such as chocolate chips, chopped nuts, dried fruits etc..

How to do it? 

I started off with soaking the flaxseeds in water, they replace the two eggs found in a traditional banana bread recipe. 

After this I measured and mixed my dry ingredients before turning my oven on to 175°C. I don't turn my oven on before starting because ours heats up in no time.

I then started off the wet ingredients by melting the coconut oil in a big bowl and breaking my bananas into the same bowl. I prefer not to mash the bananas beforehand but rather go to town on them with a whisk gradually breaking them down further as I add in the other ingredients.

First I add in the flaxseeds, stomp everything with my whisk, then the dry ingredients and mix everything gently with my whisk. For the birthday cake I tripled the batch so I used the Kitchen Aid to make my life easier. When making a single batch of cake I usually add in a small handful of dried Asian pear chunks and two small handfuls of extra dark chocolate chips which I fold in gently.

When the batter is done, pour it into a bread pan lined with some greaseproof paper and bake for forty-five minutes. The cake should come out looking golden brown and it should pass the toothpick test. For the birthday cake I used a roasting pan and didn't have to adjust the baking time but it's always good to check.



Well, that's Baby Bear's birthday for now, but I will leave you with this little side treat that I whipped up for anyone with an extra sweet-tooth: vegan toasted coconut chocolate chunk brownies seriously THE best brownies I've ever made and I can't wait to try out some variations!