Here are ten vegan banana breads, and we’ve put them in order of how much goes into the batter past the bananas. The ones at the top lean on the fruit for their sweetness. The ones at the bottom are cake, and very good cake, and we’ve said which is which so you know what you’re baking before you start.
Ripe bananas matter more than any other decision you’ll make here. Black-spotted, soft, almost too far gone is what you want, and the ones that look too ugly for the fruit bowl are the ones that make the best loaf.
1. Banana Breakfast Oatmeal Cookies
This one’s ours, and it isn’t a loaf at all. Banana, oats, dates, cocoa and a spoon of peanut butter, baked as nine cookies, with no flour, no oil and no sugar beyond what’s in the fruit.
If what you want from banana bread is the banana, this is where we’d start.
2. 5-Ingredient Vegan Banana Bread
Mashed banana, coconut oil, maple syrup, white whole wheat flour and baking soda, and that’s the entire list. There’s no refined sugar in it and no eggs to replace, so there’s nothing to fuss over.
Twelve slices at 147 calories each, which is the lowest on this page.
Get the recipe from Hello Frozen Bananas.
3. Classic Vegan Banana Bread
Applesauce stands in for the oil and maple syrup stands in for the sugar, and there are three flours in it, including spelt. A squeeze of lemon juice curdles the plant milk into a kind of buttermilk, and that’s what gives the loaf its rise.
Get the recipe from Chef Ani.
4. Peanut Butter Espresso Banana Bread
Amaranth, banana and peanut flour instead of wheat, with ground espresso running through it. There’s no sugar at all, only erythritol, and it takes forty minutes.
It’s the strangest flour combination on this list, and also the one with the most protein in it.
Get the recipe from Strength and Sunshine.
5. Gluten-Free Gingerbread Banana Bread
Ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice over three ripe bananas, so the whole house smells like December while it bakes. Forty-five minutes, and it’s gluten-free and allergy-free.
What carries this loaf is the spice rather than sugar, which is why it sits this high on the list.
Get the recipe from Strength and Sunshine.
6. Vegan Chocolate and Nut Banana Bread
Chocolate chips and walnuts through the batter, plus a tablespoon of molasses that deepens both the color and the flavor. It takes an hour and gives you ten slices at 263 calories.
There’s half a cup of sugar and a quarter cup of oil in it, which is why it lands in the middle of this list rather than near the top.
Get the recipe from A Virtual Vegan.
7. Vegan Raspberry Banana Bread
A cup of raspberries and some dark chocolate folded through the batter. The raspberries are the good idea here, because their sharpness keeps the loaf from being one flat sweet note from end to end.
Eighty minutes and around 294 calories a slice. There’s no oil in it, which is unusual for a loaf this rich.
Get the recipe from Tinned Tomatoes.
8. Vegan Tahini Banana Bread
A hundred and twenty grams of tahini go into the batter, and that makes it denser and less sweet than the others. Seventy minutes, ten slices at 332 calories.
There’s coconut sugar and olive oil in it too, so this isn’t a light loaf by any measure. We’d still make it, because tahini and banana turn out to be a very good pair.
Get the recipe from Addicted to Dates.
9. Cafe-Style Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
This is the thick-sliced kind you get in a coffee shop, and it tastes like it because of what goes in. Half a cup of sunflower oil and three-quarters of a cup of raw sugar, which works out to 492 calories a slice across twelve.
That’s the highest number on this page by some way, and we’ll be plain about it: this is a cake. A good one, for the day you want a cake.
Get the recipe from My Goodness Kitchen.
10. Cekodok Pisang
We’ve ended with something that isn’t a bread at all. These are Malaysian banana fritters, spiced with cinnamon and cloves and fried in small, rough spoonfuls. Eighteen minutes, and it makes twelve at 155 calories.
They’re deep fried and there’s no way around that, so save them for the day when overripe bananas and a free afternoon happen to line up.
Get the recipe from Cinnamon Snail.
How to use less sugar in any of them
Add a fourth banana and cut the sugar in half. The loaf comes out slightly denser, and in all the years we’ve been doing it nobody at our table has ever noticed.
Applesauce swaps for oil one for one, and if the bananas aren’t quite ripe enough, a handful of chopped dates will carry the loaf on their own.
And, always, seek health consciously.
