Chai Banana Bread

Gently caressed with my special chai blend, eating my banana bread is a sensuous experience. I use all plant based materials and whole grain flour. Hope you enjoy this creation that I’ve been fine tuning like a nicely aged wine for over 25 years.

Newly married me wasn’t interested a whole lot in tennis, but a partner who was a tennis champ & tennis captain at school meant that I needed to ramp up my game. Many Sunday evenings were spent trying to get me to come up to speed in our little one bedroom apartment watching reruns of famous matches. My best part was the groans and moans let out by the players, and I would try to mimic them. That of course didn’t go too well with the tennis captain who felt that I wasn’t being serious about his craft.

Soon it was time to step out onto the courts for the next stage of learning. Definitely not my cup of chai, but I did my best braving sun and heat to learn a few tips from the pro. My fave part of Sunday mornings was après tennis, when the tennis players wrapped up their game & their families came home for a meal. Sunny, Mark & my partner would hit the ball several times & then finally exhausted come home. Here was the bit I loved. Nini would bring her banana bread over knowing my vegetarian tastes and I would cook up some of my favorite foods to fuel the team.

I’ve been experimenting with Nini’s delicious bread since. Due to my extreme love for all things healthy, I decided to make it vegan without any butter, with whole wheat flour and add in nuts & my favorite chai blend. Its taken me many, many iterations to get the chemical composition just right so that the bread rises spectacularly and is also cooked inside out deliciously. I also didn’t want to compromise on taste and it had to have just the hint of sugar to round off the spices but not too much.

My polish neighbor stopped to ask me how to make an Indian sauce and we got talking about flour. He was convinced that white flour is the bane of civilization. Given this ultimatum, I had no choice but to switch to whole wheat flour-an experiment with sprouted whole wheat flour was great, but organic whole wheat bread flour made an even better banana bread.

Its now time to share this exotic beauty with you all- Bronzed, nutty, spicy, my chai banana bread is everything a banana bread should be and more. You won’t be able to stop at one slice and why should you anyway? Its healthy, plant food, that’s outlandishly delicious. So go ahead, try my chai banana bread and I promise you heaven. Otherwise as they say in India ‘Money Back’ 🙂

You need

1 ½ cups organic whole wheat bread flour
1 ½ cups overripe mashed bananas
2 tbsp Silk coconut yogurt
1 tbsp vanilla essence
½ cup grapeseed oil
1 tsp oat milk
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp ground dry ginger
13 cloves, ground
¼ cup sugar
½ tsp all spice
¾ cup walnuts, crushed

Line 9’ baking pan with parchment paper.

Combine all ingredients except walnuts in medium bowl of electric mixer. Beat on low speed till ingredients are combined. Then beat on medium speed till mixture is smooth and changes color. Fold in walnuts. Spread mixture into prepared pan. Bake in moderate oven(350⁰ F) about 1 hour. Turn on wire rack to cool.

Serve warm with a cup of sweet chai.