Hi Friends!

So I did it again. I found another way to use tahini:

Banana Bread!

There’s a little inside joke around our community about my love for tahini, shown here:) Some people go bananas (get it) for almond butter or peanut butter, but for me it’s tahini.

Some of our members are currently on week 3 of our Eat Less Sugar Program, and this week we introduced dessert night and the importance of having one.

Peter and I  don’t do so great when we cut out sugar completely, and I do think you can have a little sugar in your diet and maintain optimum health. I also think it’s important to find a little pleasure in your food, in the health world we’re often told we shouldn’t treat food that way, but we have taste buds for reason, they are a sensory organ.

Now, when we have dessert night it’s usually dark chocolate or a homemade baked good.  I’m a big fan of baking your own desserts as you can control the amount of sugar, oils and the most important thing of all: the ingredients!

When it comes to the recipes we share on this site and in our home we always focus on health first, and how it’s going to make us feel. Then making it taste good.

Take this banana bread for instance.

I picked the following ingredients below for their key health benefits, the way they make us feel when we eat them, and then for taste and creation.

• Turmeric

Turmeric is gaining in popularity due to its availability and health benefits. I included it in this recipe because it’s anti-inflammatory and will help balance the sugar. It’s flavor is mild when added to baked goods and pairs well with ginger. It’s cancer fighting, helps with inflammation, it’s great for the brain and repairing stem cells. Turmeric in juice and beverages is really popular, but I think it’s time we start adding it to other foods.

• Brown Rice Flour

You can really use any type of flour for this recipe, but I used brown rice because it’s gluten free, works well in most baked goods. It’s not bleached and is one of the easiest whole food flours to digest. You can also make it yourself by grinding brown rice in a high speed blender.

• Garbanzo Bean Flour

I like using garbanzo bean flour to lessen the load of the grain-based flours. We’ve been trying to cut back on grains, and supplementing with bean flours is a great way to do that. It adds more protein to the recipe and gives it a more complex texture without altering the flavor too much. We don’t count calories, but it does have fewer calories than your average baking flours.

• Coconut sugar

Coconut sugar is one of the few processed sweeteners we will use. It’s low glycemic, so it doesn’t spike your blood sugar like cane sugar. It’s made from coconut sap, and coconuts, in our minds, are one of the more nutritious foods on the planet – plus it’s easy to use, in a 1:1 ratio.

• Ginger

Ginger is great for digestion and giving baked goods a slightly spicy flavor. It’s smart to add digestive aids, like ginger, to desserts and sweets to ensure they’re properly metabolized and aren’t stored and turned into fat.

• Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is such a cool cat. It’s created by pressing the “meat” of the coconut to remove the fiber. It’s one of the few oils that can be heated at a high temperature without converting to a trans-fat. It’s also rich in medium-chain-triglycerides, which means it’s easily turned into and used as energy, unlike most fats coming from oil.

• Dark Chocolate Chips

When using chocolate chips for baking, we try to get the dark chocolate as often as possible, at least 67% – otherwise they’re mostly sugar. If I can’t get dark chocolate chips I’ll buy a bar of dark chocolate and chop that up instead.  The benefits of chocolate come from the dark variety due to the cacao.

Now that you know why I used those ingredients, let’s get baking!

Turmeric Tahini Banana Bread

Ok guys, are you going to make this bread?

Leave a comment and let me know what your favorite quick bread combination is.