Heaven is a place with blueberry walnut banana bread

I will make your kitchen smell divine

Has a bite of food ever made you want to weep with joy? No? Well, in that case, I feel bad for you. And also, I recommend you make my world famous (okay, my garden apartment famous) blueberry walnut banana bread.

Even if you don’t bawl from sheer tastebud delight, you’ll probably at least want to give yourself a hug after you taste your first slice.

I like to think it’s the addition of maple syrup that vaults this loaf from merely “yummy” to “I’ll punch a room full of babies for another piece” status.

On that note…Bon appetite, my future fellow would-be baby punchers!

Ingredients

Get ready to mush.

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup pastry flour
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 cup organic, raw sugar
• 2 Tbsps ground flax, plus 1/4 cup hot water (this here is our egg replacer)
• 3 ripe bananas
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 big ole’ cup frozen blueberries
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp organic, pure maple syrup
• A smidgen of love and dollop hope and a dash of dreams (Just playing. Use as much of these as you want).

Get your loaf on…

Just try to resist eating me with a spoon.

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease a bread loaf pan.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
3. In a small bowl, mix the ground flax with the hot water to make a “flax egg” and pop the mixture in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes. This helps it thicken up for its egg duties.
4. In another small bowl, mash the bananas before stirring in the almond milk, maple syrup and vanilla. If the thought of biting into warm banana bits as you enjoy your bread sounds as yummy to you as it does to me, leave a few lumps.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and mix until just combined. Note: If you over-mix your bread it will get tough, and not in the good Chuck Norris sense.
6. Fold in the walnuts and blueberries.
7. Resist the urge to just say “to hell with it,” and eat all the batter with a spoon. Instead, pour the mixture into the bread pan and shake it a little to even it out.
8. Pop it in the oven for an hour to 75 minutes.
9. To make sure the loaf has cooked through, poke the middle of the loaf with a toothpick or knife. If it comes out clean, you’re golden. Now stay that way, pony boy.

Warning: This bread is highly coveted and disappears quickly in my household. In fact, I’m off to hide the remainder of my latest loaf in a locker at Union Station. Later.