Baking Mad Healthy Baking Challenge

So it's the end of January. Have you succeeded in your healthy eating plans for 2012 so far? Personally I've been finding it hard to avoid treats - which inevitably ends up in me feeling fat and guilty! So when the chance came up to join the Baking Mad Healthy Baking Blogger Challenge, well I quite simply couldn't pass up the chance. 'Healthy' and 'baking' in one sentence? Count me in!

The lovely people at Baking Mad gave me a choice of recipes, we opted for the Low Calorie Banana Bread. I love banana bread so the chance to try out a low calorie version was too much to resist. We were then sent a box with the key dry ingredients we needed to do the job - we just had to provide bananas, mixed spice and milk!

Ingredients

100g      self raising flour (Allinson Nature Friendly)

100ml    semi-skimmed milk

25g        Half Spoon Granulated Sugar (Silver Spoon)

25g        pecans (chopped)

2            bananas, small and ripe.

0.5tsp    mixed spice

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C, fan oven 160°C, 350°F, gas mark 4

2. Place flour, sugar, spice and nuts in a mixing bowl.

3. Mash the banana on a plate with a fork until mushy.

4. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture.

5. Mix the banana and milk together and pour into the flour mixture. Mix well.

6. Pour the mixture into a loaf tin or the individual loaf tins.

7. Bake for 20-25minutes (35- 40 minutes for a larger loaf) or until firm to touch and golden brown and when a skewer is inserted in comes out clean.

TIP - Omit the nuts and add a handful of dried fruits or 1tbsp dark chocolate chips.

This recipe is really quick and straight forward. It's the perfect recipe for rustling up in a hurry and for using up those bananas that are a bit on the ripe side.

We made one big loaf, but in hindsight we'd probably make four smaller loaves as we felt the large loaf didn't rise as well and was fairly dense. The image above is Baking Mad's banana bread, ours didn't look as pretty but certainly tasted fab!

Baking Mad have a range of low calorie baking recipes on their website - I think our next challenge shall be the Low Calorie Chocolate & Beetroot Cupcakes! mmmmm

For more information on Baking Mad and their great recipes and competitions like them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. (@bakingmaduk).

Ingredients were received for the purposes of this post. No other reward, financial or otherwise, was received in exchange for this post. All opinions expressed are entirely our own.