Whole Wheat Banana Bread with Chocolate Glaze

The third and last banana bread for this week, and the last bake for this year’s bakeathon is a healthy, sugar free, butter free dates whole wheat banana bread. Today’s whole wheat banana bread is moist, dense and a yummy bread cake with bananas, dates and touch of cardamom and cloves to enhance the flavor.

Continue reading or to recipe or pin it for later

Sugar, butter and all purpose flour are replaced with dates, oil and whole wheat flour. Cardamom and cloves give this bread a rustic South Indian sweet flavor. If one wants to indulge a bit, drizzle a chocolate glaze over the cake. I went a step further and topped the cake with chocolate glaze.

Topping the bread with chocolate glaze was by compulsion rather than voluntary. I used chocolate chips to make the glaze and could not get a flowing consistency and hence topped the bread with chocolate glaze instead of a drizzle. Regardless, chocolate glaze complemented the dates banana bread wonderfully. 

Whole Wheat Banana Bread with Chocolate Glaze

Source: I Camp in My Kitchen
Total Time: 60 – 70 minutes
Preparation: 10 – 15 minutes
Bake Time: 50 – 55 minutes
Yields: 1 mini loaf (5 ¾” X 3”)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Whole Wheat Flour (I used chapthi ~ aata flour
• 14-16 Pitted Dates
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• ⅓ tsp Baking Soda 
• 2 Ripe Bananas, mashed (1 cup mashed)
• 2 tbsp + 2 tsp Vegetable Oil ( I used 3 tbsp. 3 tsp = 1 tbsp)
• 2 tbsp + 2 tsp Water 
• 3 Cardamoms (⅛ tsp cardamom seeds)
• 1 Clove

Chocolate Glaze

• 3 Squares of Milk or Dark Chocolate (I used semi sweet chocolate chips)
• 1 tbsp Heavy Cream (choco chips didn’t melt properly and had to add some cream to dilute it) 

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 325 F
• Grease or spray some cooking spray in a mini loaf pan and line with a parchment paper. 
• In a wide bowl whisk together the dry ingredients( flour, baking soda and baking powder. 
• In a food processor, take bananas, dates, crushed cardamom & clove, and process until smooth. You can do this even in a blender. 
• Add oil, water and mix well or pulse once to mix everything. 
• Add fruit mixture to flour and combine using a spoon or a spatula. 
• Pour the batter into a prepared loaf pan. Tap twice or thrice to remove any air from the batter.
• Bake in a preheated oven for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. 
• Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes, remove the loaf from the pan and cool on a rack until completely cool. 
• Take chocolate in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for a minute or two until it melts, stirring every 30 seconds. I used chocolate chips and melted it for 2 minutes. Chips did not melt to flowing consistency. I added a tbsp of cream, stirred until blended and microwaved for another 30-60 seconds. I did not get a flowing consistency but was spreadable. 
• Pour or spread chocolate glaze on the bread and dig in. 
• Store in an airtight container. Bread was fresh for 2-3 days at room temperature in this winter weather. 

Note:

• Flour – Banana Bread is usually a sense bread and the one with whole wheat is even more dense. If one is not used to whole wheat bread, one can use ½ all purpose flour and ½ whole wheat flour. 
• Sweetener – the batter was not very sweet and I used sweet chocolate chips to make a sweeter glaze. Though the batter was not sweet, after baking, I felt the sweet was perfect. If one prefers, they can add some sugar, white or brown will work out fine. 
• Chocolate Glaze – I ran out chocolate bars and used semi sweet chocolate chips to prepare the glaze. When melted the chips, it was not of flowing consistency. Hence added some heavy cream. A drizzle of Chocolate syrup might also go well with this bread. Use it instead of chocolate glaze. 

This is part of the Bake-a-thon 2016