Food Friday: Vegan Marble Banana Bread

I am very excited to announce my second-ever pinterest recipe adventure was a delicious success! If you follow my pinterest, you'll know that the majority of my pins are of food and so I can't help but celebrate each time I manage to make one a reality [I want to eat. it. ALL.].

I love banana bread, always have always will. It's deliciousness is the only reason I can even stand saying the worst moist [ugh. that was hard and gross -that's what she said... I digress]. The point is, when I saw this pin and knew that I could up my game to include a chocolate - but not too chocolatey - banana bread, I nearly passed out from excitement. 

INGREDIENTS:  1 cup mashed banana 3/4 cups sugar 1 teaspoon canola oil 1/3 cup almond milk 1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda 3/4 teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder 6 tablespoons boiling water, divided

Begin by boiling the water and preheating the oven to 350 F. Next, start mashing your naners in a large bowl, beating in the sugar, oil, milk and vanilla. Set aside.

Sift your flour, baking soda and salt - not because it's fun, but because you know it's worth it. Gently mix the flour into the wet ingredients.

Now, here's where things get crazy. Separate half of the batter into another bowl. In a small bowl mix the cocoa powder with 3T of the boiling water. Once this has dissolved into delicious hot cocoa water mix it into one half of the batter, creating that chocolatey goodness. Once this is mixed, add the remaining 3T of boiling water to the boring ol' plain batter and mix.

At this point, you should have two bowls of batter. Begin added them to your nicely buttered, lightly flour-dusted pan, one half cup at a time layering the chocolate with the plain. Once all your batter is in there take a knife and swirl it around the length of the pan -don't let it drag on the bottom though.

Put it in your preheated oven and voila! 55 minutes later [more if your oven is sneaky] you've got a delicious marble banana bread! ...and since it's all vegan and healthy you can pretty much devour that thing start to finish right from the oven. Enjoy!

Notes:

Just because it's vegan doesn't mean it needs to have a weird rubbery texture!

Hurray for finding healthy recipes that also taste good!!

Since it's vegan you'll need almond, soy or rice milk instead of regular. Ooo! Also, you could try coconut milk. Any would do and they're all pretty fantastic to bake with.

Sift the flour twice. This always helps with cakes and muffins and since eggs aren't included in vegan recipes, the sifted flour will definitely help lighten the batter.