Lowfat Banana Bread

ATTENTION KMART SHOPPERS!!

This is NOT your Grandmother's Banana Bread! First of all, it isn't made with cups and cups of oil and butter. In fact, it doesn't have oil or butter in it AT ALL! Secondly, each slice is packed with FIVE WHOLE GRAMS OF FIBER! Yes, you heard me correctly!

A few weeks ago, I found some Fiber-Sure marked down at my local Kroger's. Apparently, the name is going to change to Metamucil Clear & Natural, so they are selling the old bottles at 1/2 price. Fiber-Sure (an all natural vegetable fiber called inulin) is clear, tasteless, can be used in recipes without altering the ingredients, and is a fantastic way to add fiber to your diet!

I found this recipe at the Fiber-sure website and couldn't wait to try it! I had frozen some ripe bananas a while ago, so I had everything I needed for this recipe on hand. By the way, when there is a great sale on nuts, I stock up like crazy and put them in my freezer. So to answer your question, yes, I freeze my nuts.

By the way, this is not a paid endorsement (as evidenced by my previous sentence regarding nuts).

The bread turned out nice and moist and quite tasty. Next time I make it, I think I'll eliminate the nuts and use the saved point to put a little reduced fat cheddar cheese on top of each slice. Yes, I'm completely weird that way. I have this thing with banana bread and cheddar cheese. Can't explain it. There's no excuse for it. Been eating it that way since I can remember making my own food. I have some other weird food combos that I'll have to tell you about some other time.

Without further ado...

Lowfat Banana Bread

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup Fibersure
1/2 cup sugar (I used Splenda for baking)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed very ripe bananas (2 medium)
1/3 cup fruit-based substitute for fat or unsweetened applesauce
2 large egg whites (I used 1/4 cup of egg substitute)
1 large egg (I used 1/4 cup of egg substitute here also)
1/4 cup pecans, chopped

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 9" by 5" metal loaf pan. In large bowl, combine flour, Fibersure, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In medium bowl, with fork, mix bananas, fat substitute, egg whites, and egg until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture just until flour mixture is moistened.

2. Pour batter into prepared pan; sprinkle with chopped pecans. Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out almost clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Cool in pan on wire rack 10 minutes; remove from pan and cool completely on wire rack.

Makes 1 loaf, 16 slices.

Each slice: About 119 calories (15 percent calories from fat), 3g protein, 23g carbohydrate, 2g total fat (0g saturated), 13mg cholesterol, 155mg sodium, 4g fiber.

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