This whole grain healthy banana bread recipe is so moist and sweet, everyone is always shocked to find out it’s actually good for you!
What makes this the best healthy banana bread?
- You will love the soft, fluffy texture.
- The loaf packs in up to two cups of ripe banana, which is more banana than many other homemade banana bread recipes.
- It’s one of my most popular recipes, with over 300 positive reviews from readers who’ve tried it. So you know the recipe must be good!
- Oil free, egg free, refined sugar free, and dairy free options are all included.
- If you have overripe bananas sitting on the counter and no idea how to use them up, this low calorie banana bread is the perfect solution. Leftover slices freeze well, and the banana quick bread is great for breakfast meal prep.
Plus, can we talk about the taste again? You’ll think you are eating banana cake. My entire family is obsessed and asks me to make the recipe at least once a month. And it’s so easy that I’m happy to oblige.
You may also like this Chocolate Banana Ice Cream
I have tried so many different banana bread recipes before, until I found this one 5 months ago! I have never looked back! My husband loves it.
It comes out soft and moist, not dry at all & if you eat it the next day, which is a real challenge, it tastes even better! Love it!
Step by step recipe video
Above, watch the full banana bread recipe video
Banana bread health benefits
Whole grain. The quick loaf provides over 15% of the RDA for fiber per serving.
High in vitamins and antioxidants. The banana bread is high in potassium, manganese, selenium, vitamin B6, and vitamin C.
Low calorie. There’s no oil required, and each slice is just 100 calories!
To lower the oil without sacrificing moisture or taste, it uses four to five whole mashed bananas, giving the banana bread recipe the perfect bakery-style texture without a ton of empty calories. Yogurt adds even more softness without weighing the bread down.
And though I’m normally not a fan of oil free baking, this bread is definitely an exception. You can easily omit the oil entirely, and it will still turn out amazingly soft and delicious.
Naturally sweetened. While many traditional banana breads contain at least a cup of refined sugar and over half a cup of butter, this lightened up healthy banana bread recipe cuts way back on the things you don’t want and relies on fruit for natural sweetness.
Thanks to the extra banana, the bread needs just half a cup of sweetener for the entire recipe. This is around half of what is called for in popular banana bread recipes from Martha Stewart, Food Network, Rachael Ray, and Betty Crocker.
Special diet friendly. The banana bread can be both vegan and gluten free. It uses no eggs and is low sodium, cholesterol free, low fat and very low in saturated fat.
Want more low calorie snacks? Make Applesauce Muffins or Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Healthy banana loaf ingredients
The recipe calls for just a few basic ingredients: bananas, flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, optional yogurt, oil or milk of choice, sweetener, and pure vanilla extract.
Bananas: Choose ripe bananas for the best taste. Look for skins that are at least partially brown and spotted. Fully brown bananas are actually perfect here. Do not throw out your brown bananas! They are great for banana bread.
Flour: You can use all purpose flour, whole grain spelt flour, all purpose gluten free flour, or whole wheat pastry flour. Oat flour and whole wheat flour both yield a denser loaf than I personally prefer, but many readers have written in to say they’ve tried and love the whole wheat banana bread. So it’s completely your choice.
The recipe box below includes an almond flour option. I do not suggest coconut flour, because it will give you a dry and crumbly loaf.
Finally, you can replace up to half a cup of the flour with protein powder to turn it into a high protein snack recipe.
Milk or oil: I love the rich, buttery flavor of coconut oil. Vegetable or avocado oil work as well. Or you can make the recipe with milk instead of oil. As a vegan, I like almond milk.
Sweetener: Choose any all purpose liquid sweetener, such as pure maple syrup, agave, or honey. You only need half a cup for the whole loaf!
*If you’d like to use sugar or a granulated sugar free sweetener instead, substitute 2/3 cup of sugar for all of the liquid sweetener. Increase the milk to 3/4 cup.
Vanilla: Buy high quality pure vanilla extract, which adds warm notes of butter and caramel without the artificial aftertaste you’d get from imitation vanilla flavoring.
Optional ingredients
Yogurt: For a high protein loaf, swap half a cup of banana for Greek yogurt, plain yogurt, or even nondairy yogurt. Or try flavored yogurts, like strawberry or blueberry, to create a fun new flavor variation.
Chocolate chips: But when are chocolate chips optional, really?
Nuts: To make a homemade banana nut bread with healthy fats, I love stirring in a handful of chopped walnuts, pistachios, almonds, or pecans. These can be raw or toasted, and there’s no need to measure.
Other add-ins of choice: The bread is easy to customize by swirling in a half teaspoon of ground cinnamon or a pinch of cardamom or ginger. Or try adding half a cup of large or mini chocolate chips, raisins, cranberries or dates, or shredded coconut.
For even higher protein, try this Protein Banana Bread
How to make healthy banana bread
The banana bread is super simple to make, and leftovers can be sliced and frozen for an instant breakfast or healthy snack any time you are craving banana bread.
- Start by preheating the oven to 350° Fahrenheit or 176° Celsius. Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan with fat free oil spray. Alternatively, line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper. Set this pan aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the mashed banana, yogurt, sweetener, milk or oil, and pure vanilla extract. Whisk with a fork or spatula.
- Stir in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and optional chocolate chips and cinnamon (or other add-ins of choice) until just evenly mixed.
- Smooth the banana bread batter into your prepared baking pan. Place the pan on the center rack of the preheated oven, and bake for forty minutes.
- When time is up, allow the quick bread to sit in the turned-off oven for an additional ten minutes. This will help the recipe to firm up without burning the top.
- Check for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the center of the loaf. It should come out mostly clean, and the loaf should appear lightly golden in color. If your recipe needs more baking time, simply turn the oven back on and continue to cook, checking every five minutes.
- Let cool. Both the taste and texture are better the next day, so I like to loosely cover the cooled banana bread and refrigerate overnight.
- Serve for breakfast, snack, or even dessert. The bread is delicious plain or topped with almond butter, cream cheese, or Homemade Nutella.
- Refrigerate leftovers for three to four days, or slice and freeze leftover banana bread for up to three months.
Katie’s tips for best results
Follow the recipe. The first time you make the banana bread, it’s important to follow the instructions and ingredient amounts to a T. This allows you to see how the recipe should turn out. Then you can make changes to subsequent batches to learn how the modifications may alter the results.
Calibrate your oven. Many ovens (including my own) are not calibrated correctly, so when the control panel shows a certain temperature, it’s not actually the true temperature. I recommend buying an inexpensive oven thermometer to ensure your banana bread does not come out undercooked and gooey in the middle.
Do not overmix the batter. Stirring the banana bread batter until just evenly mixed prevents it from developing too much gluten or pushing air out and yielding a tough, dense, or rubbery loaf.
Use gram measurements. This is my #1 baking tip if you want accurately measured, consistent baked goods every time. Food scales are available for just about ten dollars and also make recipes much easier to clean than measuring cups.
Healthy Banana Bread
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cup mashed banana (360g)
- 1/2 cup yogurt or additional banana (120g)
- 1/2 cup pure maple syrup or honey (120g)
- 1/3 cup oil or milk of choice (60g)
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract (10g)
- 2 cups flour (240g) (or try this Almond Flour Banana Bread)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
Instructions
- 1. Preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit (176° Celsius). Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan, then set the pan aside.
- 2. Whisk the mashed banana, yogurt, sweetener, milk or oil, and vanilla extract in a large mixing bowl.
- 3. Stir in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and optional chocolate chips and cinnamon until just evenly mixed.
- 4. Smooth the batter into the prepared pan, and bake on the center rack of the oven for 40 minutes.
- 5. Turn off the oven and allow the healthy banana bread to sit an additional 10 minutes in the turned-off oven. This step helps the middle to firm up without browning too much on top.
- 6. Insert a toothpick into the center of the loaf. It should come out mostly clean. (If yours needs more time, simply turn the oven back on and continue cooking, checking for doneness every five minutes.)
- 7. Let cool, then slice and enjoy for breakfast or a healthy snack. Or loosely cover the cooled loaf with a towel and refrigerate overnight. If you can wait, the taste and texture are even better the next day!
- 8. For leftovers after one day, refrigerate in a covered container for up to four days or slice and freeze for up to three months.
Video
Notes
More healthy breakfast and snack recipes
Holy moly hot diggity. I just made these, and they are SO good!
I used 1/2 oat 1/2 spelt flour, coconut oil, stevia sweetened choc chips, walnuts, and greek yogurt.
I made these in normal muffin tins and cooked for about 22 mins + an extra 5 mins with the heat turned off (great tip btw).
This was my first time trying this recipe and it turned out amazing!
The combination of ingredients I used was:
I added 1/4 cup mini choco chips to batter with 1/4 cup chopped walnuts and sprinkled 1/4 cup mini choco chips on top. I also added 1/2 tspn extra imitation (didn’t have pure on hand) vanilla extract, vegetable oil, Mountain High whole milk plain yogurt, All-purpose flour, pure maple syrup, organic cane sugar, cinnamon, and followed everything else as is.
Had to cook it an additional 10 minutes after the initial baking.
Thank you so much for making it. I love your picture!
Hello, I don’t have a loaf pan? Does anyone know how long to bake in a brownie pan?
Did it exactly and came out amazing!
If we will continue to eat it throughout the week, do you recommend us still putting it back in the fridge or leave it outside Is fine ?
Thank you
Outside for a day or two should be fine, but just like any other banana bread it will be best to fridge or slice and freeze after a little while for freshness 🙂
Would it be okay to skip the honey/agave?
Amazing. Cooked for 35 minutes in a bundt pan.
Made this today! It is such an easy and delicious recipe. I doubled the amount of chocolate chips because I love things super chocolatey. I used oat flour and maple syrup. I didn’t add the extra sweetener because I didn’t think it needed extra sweetness with the banana.
The best. Anytime I’ve made another version, like different flours, oil/milk, different yogurts,it always comes out amazing. I omit the cinnamon for the most part since I don’t love that flavor in my bread. Best recipe hands down!
This banana bread was absolutely perfect. I am obsessed with the healthy ingredients and the fact that even without a ton of added oil or butter, it came out tasting just like a traditional banana bread, maybe even better. Will definitely use this recipe again! I used 150grams (5.3 ozH nonfat greek yogurt for the 1/2 cup yogurt portion and then 2 Tbsp coconut oil and 3 tbsp unsweetened almond milk where there was an option for using 1/3 cup of either milk or oil. Also I used a crushed up Hu Kitchen hazelnut filled chocolate bar for the top – highly recommend. Whole recipe came out to be 2,345 calories with the Hu chocolate bar if anyone is curious 🙂
Thank you so much for trying it!
I made this using oat flour, Lactaid milk, honey, sugar, and nonfat greek yogurt. I added a little bit of chocolate chips and then baked them as muffins. My kids and I loved them! Next time, I may try using Splenda and almond milk and almond milk yogurt just to compare the taste.
Hi!
I made this banana bread but it unfortunately came out more rubbery and not like a bread. I used oat flour, stevia, almond milk, and honey, I opted to not use oil. The rest of the ingredients I used as per the instructions. Do you know what I could have done wrong? Thanks!
A combination of oat flour (very dense) and no oil (also dense) will yield more dense baked goods in general. Many people are fine with/used to (or even like) the texture of fat free baked goods, but if you want the most tender results, using oil and a flour like spelt or all purpose will yield results closest to that.
Jason
Does anyone know how this would turn out in a breadmaker? I have a yeast free setting which works really well for a much less healthy banana bread! I’m certainly not a pro at using my bread maker yet, so any tips on why this would/wouldn’t work would be much appreciated 🙂
I made it today and really enjoyed it. I used what I had available which was Greek yoghurt, olive oil, a little milk, and half plain flour half wholemeal spelt. Baked it exactly per oven instructions and it came out beautifully!
OMGoodness! Well, to start I ate 1/3 of the bread before I saw I was suppose to wait one or two days. Heck no!!! I removed it from oven, immediately took out of the pan and sliced a huge slice, slathered butter all over that bread and ate. Then I went back and got another slice while hot and ate it.
Now I will say after starting recipe I realized I was short a banana (only had 2) so I smashed up blackberries (which added another 1/4 cup) and finished up the measuring cup with 1/4 cup applesauce. It worked!
Thank you for the recipe. I have no doubt the all banana would be delish!
I made this yesterday and enjoyed it as breakfast this morning! The result was totally spectacular, even though it was the first time I made banana bread- thanks to your easy-to-follow instruction. Moist, rich and decadent! I added raisins for additional goodness. Yum! Thank you so much for sharing this incredible recipe, I’m definitely going to dig your recipes more!!
I just made this and it’s super good! In terms of storage, do I have to refrigerate the bread after letting it sit overnight? Thanks!
Hi, store as you would a traditional banana bread :). It’s fine to leave out overnight but after that is freshest if refrigerated or sliced and frozen.
Hi would I be able to use half oat flour and half all purpose?
Yes!