This banana bread is awesomely tasty and actually pretty healthy. Even certain members of my family who don't like banana bread at all like this one.
1/3 cup no-sugar added applesauce (i.e. one of those mott's fruitsations cups you put in your kids lunch). You can also sub in 1/3 c Crisco but that ups the fat content of the bread and to be honest the applesauce version tastes just as good.
1/2 cup white sugar
2 egg whites or 1 whole egg
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1-2 mashed bananas
optional:
walnut pieces
chocolate chips
directions:
Mix together applesauce (Crisco) and sugar. Add in egg whites (egg) and mix well. Next, mix in the salt, baking powder and baking soda. Once that's blended, add in the cocoa. Mash your bananas with a fork or a potato masher and mix those in next. Then mix in the flour.
The dough will be quite wet.
At this point, I usually throw in a couple handfuls of chocolate chips and some chopped up walnuts, but that's up to you because it tastes good without too.
Use baking spray and spray your loaf pan, then dump the dough into the pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for at least 45 minutes. It's done when a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out pretty clean. The baking time will depend on how big the bananas were. Sometimes I have baked it for almost an hour.
You can also make this a non-chocolate version of banana bread by leaving out the cocoa powder and increasing the flour to 1 3/4 cups.
If you use the applesauce and egg whites, and leave out the chocolate chips and walnuts, this bread will be approx 130 calories a slice (if you cut the loaf into 8 slices).