Low(er) Carb Chocolate Chip Banana Bread with Walnuts (and How to Make Your Own Almond Flour)

I love banana bread. It has been a staple in my house since I was a small, small child and I hate going without it. I also have a big sweet tooth when it comes to cookies and cake (banana bread falls under cake in my mind). When we went low-carb, I thought, "How? How will I get my precious banana bread? How will I have my delicious desserts?"

Then I discovered almond flour through this lovely website. But, alas, I wanted to use my banana bread recipe that everyone raved about. So what did I do?

Through trial and error (so many errors), I finally have a low(er) carb banana bread that I can rave about. And I am sharing it with you.

Ingredients:

2 cups almond flour
¼ cup ground flax seed
¼ cup all-purpose flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. baking powder
½ t. salt
1 t. ground cinnamon
1 cup Splenda (or substitute sugar of your choice—just make sure it’s equal to 1 cup sugar)
½ cup cooking oil
2 large eggs
¼ cup Greek yogurt
1 t. vanilla extract
3 overripe bananas, mashed
½ cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional, but delicious)
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
A small handful of rolled oats

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (approx. 175 degrees C). Butter and flour a bread loaf pan.

Combine almond flour, flax seed, all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Set aside.


Using a hand mixer, combine the oil, Splenda, and 2 eggs in a large bowl until the mixture is pale and frothy. Add ½ of the dry ingredient mixture to the bowl, mixing well. Add the Greek yogurt and vanilla extract. Mix well. Add the rest of the dry mixture, and mix again. Your batter will probably be quite thick.

Mix in the mashed bananas.


Stir in ½ cup chopped walnuts and chocolate chips.


Pour batter into the prepared loaf pan. Top with remaining 1/3 cup of chopped walnuts and handful of oats. Lightly press the topping into the batter (this will prevent it from not sticking).

Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hr. to 1 hr. 15 minutes, or whenever a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.



Notes:

You CAN make this gluten free (and lower carb) by using entirely almond flour, but be aware that it will not be as fluffy as using the ¼ cup of flour. It tastes perfectly fine, but it falls a bit flat and has a more moist texture. This is my final recipe after much trial and error, and the yogurt seems to help the bread hold a more cake-y texture (before, I tried using milk, buttermilk, etc).

If you want to go even lower in carbs, I suggest using the darkest chocolate chips you can find (or eliminating them completely) and substituting more walnuts (they help hold the bread’s structure).

Almond Flour

Now, almond flour is often readily available at your local supermarket (I often find it in the gluten free section) or your local health food shop. Unfortunately, it's very expensive for a small amount of flour--where I live, it's about $12 for approx. 3 cups of almond flour. I can easily go out and buy a 2 pound bag of almonds for $20 and have far more almond flour for my disposal.

What you'll need:

A food processor
Almonds (whether raw or blanched is your preference)
Patience

Place the almonds in batches into the food processor. Mine is tiny, so I do my almond flour about 1/2 cup at a time.

I first use the "Chop" setting and pulse it until the almonds are entirely chopped. Then I grind.

Pulse the almonds until you start to see a layer of almond meal building up at the bottom of the processor like this:

That's almost almond butter! This tells you that the flour is getting very finely ground.

Stir it up (I use a whisk or a fork), put into a container and save it for your baking. Ta-daaa, almond flour!

If you want to get REALLY technical about it and get your almond flour down to a flour consistency, you can sift your almond flour and grind down the larger pieces even more. I have even done this in a mortar and pestle. Does it make for a more flour-like consistency? Absolutely. Is it worth the time? Not in my opinion. If you're trying to impress guests or hide the fact that it's not normal flour, maybe. I find for everything else, having some more mealy type pieces doesn't bother me at all.