Allergen Free Banana Bread

I'm finally getting around to trying out some of my new recipe books for the allergic-to-everything 2 year old.  Last night my 20 year old daughter made a bunch of banana bread for the rest of us and still had a bunch of overripe bananas left. I figured our little guy would like some banana bread too.  He's really starting to notice and want all the things we have that he can't have.  I feel bad for the poor little guy and he feels sorry for himself too.  So I'm working on making things that are at least similar.

This Banana Bread recipe is from Learning to Bake Allergen Free by Colette Martin.  And if you want to buy just one cookbook on this topic, this is the one you need.  The first half of the book is extremely informative.  I learned so much about why things work and don't work as replacements, what to look for when avoiding certain foods, etc. (for instance, watch out for xanthan gum and maltodextrin if you have a corn allergy.  I never would have known that.)  So without further ado, here's the recipe...

1 cup gluten-free oat flour (I make my own by chopping oatmeal in the blender)
1 cup gluten-free flour blend (I make my own - 3/4 cup brown rice flour, 3/4 cup sweet sorghum flour, and 1/2 cup tapioca starch)
1/2 tsp xanthan gum (I use guar gum)
1/2 cup Sucanat (I used brown sugar)
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Mix these dry ingredients together and set aside.  (I added a little hemp protein powder to the dry mix too as my allergic-to-everything son can't have any milk substitutes except rice milk, which I was out of, so I used water in place of the milk below).

Mix these wet ingredients together in a separate bowl -
3 tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer with 4 Tbsp. warm water (this equals 2 eggs, in case you can have eggs)
1/4 cup sunflower oil (I used canola)
3/4 cup coconut milk beverage (I used water.  We can't have coconut... or soy... and so on.)
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 cup mashed bananas

After all your wet ingredients are mixed together, slowly add your dry ingredients and mix together until incorporated.  Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350 for 45-55 minutes.  Mine took 55 minutes and is still pretty sticky, but I should have added a little more of one of the flour mixtures as we are at 7,200 ft. elevation.  No nuts for our allergy boy, but you could add them if you wanted.  I have another recipe that has raisins in it, which made me think about adding other dried fruit too.  I might try that in a loaf or two.  Or maybe some cinnamon... but then we're really talking about a different kind of bread, aren't we?  I think the same thing could be done with any mashed fruit or veggies - mango? pumpkin? sweet potato?  Endless possibilities.  I'm guessing you'd have to watch the water content of those other fruits though, and adjust accordingly.

 These are the loaves my daughter made for the rest of us last night.  There are six of them, and we froze four of those.  I wanted to try the gluten free variety before committing to multiple batches, but it came out very well, so I'll probably make a few more loaves of those - or maybe some muffins or mini loaves - so we will always have a treat available for him.

 She also mixed a quadruple batch of cookie dough for me.  This is a recipe called "tub cookies" which is intended to be given as a gift in dough form.

Four batches was enough to fill a gallon ice cream tub.  We have Vacation Bible School at our church and have been asked to make all the cookies we can.  So this is our prep for that.  I'll bake them up over the weekend.  We didn't put anything in the dough yet so we will have options later.  These are usually just chocolate chip cookies, but I think we'll get fancy and use m&m's - ha.  Who knows. Maybe some white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts too.

And here's a picture just to make you smile.  It worked for me :)