If you love banana bread and also love pumpkin bread, then this skinny banana pumpkin chocolate chip bread is for you! What’s even better is that it’s made with whole wheat flour and contains no butter or oil!
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like having an empty refrigerator. Growing up, my family always had a full refrigerator, stocked freezer and a pantry bursting at the seams. We were very fortunate that nobody ever went hungry in my house.
However, we always clean out the refrigerator before we travel. We don’t like having any food in there that could spoil so we almost always throw out any leftovers.
But, after we return from traveling, our refrigerator is sad and empty. And that’s not a good thing for someone like me since I get hangry.
So one of the things I’ve started to do is to bake some breakfast items and put them in the freezer. I typically do this the day or two before we travel. When we return, all we need to do is thaw the items and then we have an instant snack or breakfast for the next day. It’s been a great strategy for us.
This year, we were traveling to visit family for the holidays and began our ritual of cleaning out the refrigerator. I baked two different loaves of quick bread. This skinny banana pumpkin chocolate chip bread was one of them. Since my family is a big fan of both banana bread and pumpkin chocolate chip, I merged the two together into one ultimate loaf.
The bananas prevented the bread from drying out, and I threw in extra chocolate chips for good measure. I made this even healthier by eliminating all oil and butter and substituting with applesauce. And I also used white whole wheat flour.
My family really enjoyed this bread since it was similar to the ultimate pumpkin chocolate chip bread that they adore. It froze well and was a great breakfast after we returned.
Skinny pumpkin banana chocolate chip bread
Ingredients
- 1 and 3/4 cups white whole wheat flour can substitute with all-purpose
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 can pumpkin puree NOT pumpkin pie filling
- 2 eggs
- 1 overripe banana, mashed
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Generously grease or line a standard 9″x5″ loaf pan and set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar and salt together and set aside.
- In a medium sized bowl, mix together the pumpkin, eggs, banana, applesauce, and vanilla. Transfer this to the large bowl with the dry ingredients and stir until a few dry streaks remain. Fold in the chocolate chips until everything just comes together – do not over mix.
- Bake in your preheated oven for 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.