Vegan Banana Bread: The Fourth Incarnation

To chase the stir fry on Avatar Day I had planned on making a recipe for vegan banana bread for a fourth time.  My good friend Erin, who adopted veganism for lent, and my homeboy Lazer were sick of hearing me talk about how awesome I think I am for always making such sweet banana bread so we had all planned to put it behind us that night.

The recipe is ridiculously simple and the process is seriously dummy-proof. Click Here For Vegan Banana Bread Recipe Another recipe I found while at work (Employee of the Month), I like this better than the countless other recipes around because it is fat-free and surprisingly customizable (Jamie likes to remind me how precise baking is compared to cooking even though I measure everything out perfectly as yet another outward manifestation of my O.C.D.).  The first time I made this recipe was on the night that my friend Natalee taught Jamie and I how to roll sushi (which was one of the single most empowering experiences of my life, realz!) and I followed the recipe verbatim for fear of botching it and looking stupid in front of everyone (Jamie and Natalee)!  Everything went fine and the bread turned out well but a bit bland.  So, next time around I had this genius idea to substitute chocolate silk for vanilla silk to up the flavors, but being that it is only 1/2 cup it didn't make any sort of noticeable difference and I decided that it was time to get real serious on this banana bread.  I hit up my local co-op in search of vegan chocolate chips and scored a bag of carob chips, a chocolate-like alternative.  Borrowing from a similarly portioned recipe, I simply tossed in 1/2 cup of carob chips at the final stage of mixing prior to baking and the result was exactly what I was looking for... a major flavor to kick my banana bread in the ass and get it motivated.

On this fourth occasion, I used both the chocolate soy milk and carob (why not!?) and it turned out beautifully, as usual.  We decided to follow a suggestion on the recipe's site that recommended wrapping the slices in foil and freezing them only to pan fry them in olive oil later for a toasty version.  It tasted pretty rad that way, but my bread has this habit of crumbling in a serious way when we slice it so I hope to somehow remedy this issue by tinkering a bit more in the future... more to come on this tip!