banana bread with olive oil, cranberries & chia seeds

If you haven’t ventured beyond the traditional construction of a basic banana bread, with all that butter – it’s time to see what all the fuss is about. Instead of butter, there are a variety of ingredients you can mix and match to cut back or completely out, on the butter. Coconut oil, canola oil, applesauce or fruit purée, mashed avocado, and in this case, olive oil and plain yogurt, provide the moist richness that we rely on butter to bring.

And when you wrap your head around the fact that every cup of butter rings in at over 1600 calories and a whopping 184 grams of fat, you may be easier to convince. So in the spirit of taking a walk on the milder side, check out this upscale version of banana bread with olive oil, plain yogurt and with oh-so-very-good-for-you chia seeds and dried cranberries showing up at last call.

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1. Load all the wet ingredients in the food processor or blender and give it a whiz.

2. Sift all the dry ingredients together into a medium-sized bowl.

3. Just thought I’d point out that when you go for whole grain flours, there’s usually a little left that won’t make it through the strainer, so just dump it in.

4. Add the wet to the dry.

5. Mix until just combined – I mean it.

6. You will give it a few more turns when you fold in your add-ins, so don’t worry about a few streaks of flour.

7. See? No more streaks.

8. Get it into your loaf pan and get it in the oven.

9. Close to an hour later.

10. Allow it to cool before digging in.

11. Digging in!

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