Strawberry Banana Smoothie Bread

Baking is always a part of my weekly routine. Having two boys that lately devour instead of eat, I need to keep coming up with ways of satisfying such big appetites. Also, I'd rather give them food made from scratch with quality ingredients than processed, full-of-preservatives snacks. With nutrition in mind, I'm always thinking of ways to incorporate healthy ingredients to whatever it is I'm baking that week. It is always fun to put on your creative hat and play around with the ingredients you have in hand to come up with a much healthier version of an already good recipe. This is exactly what I did this week. I had 3 very ripe bananas on my countertop so the choice of banana bread was obvious. Now for the creative part, what could be added to it to make it at least a tad healthier? I immediately thought of the strawberries inside my freezer. Hmmm, bananas and strawberries... what else is in my fridge? And then I saw it... a small cup of vanilla yogurt. Perfect! This is how this Strawberry Banana Smoothie Bread was born! The end result? A delicious and super moist loaf of heaven.

For this recipe I followed my favorite banana bread recipe which I found on Kitchen Confit a while back. It is perfect without the tweaks I did to it so give it a try whenever you want to stick with the traditional banana bread recipe.

Strawberry Banana Smoothie Bread

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

3 very ripe bananas, mashed

1 1/4 cup fresh or frozen strawberries (thawed), pureed

2 eggs beaten

1 t vanilla

2 cups flour

1 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1/2 cup vanilla yogurt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter and flour a loaf pan. (I just spray mine with Pam)

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in one bowl and set aside. Cream butter and sugar together. Add in the bananas, strawberries, eggs and vanilla. Add in the flour mixture. Add in the yogurt.

Pour mixture into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours or when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let rest in the pan for 15 minutes. Then remove from pan and let fully cool on a rack.