Banana Bread with Cauliflower

I picked up a new book at Borders the other day, it was on the sale rack and it was buy 2 get the 3rd free. So, I had two books in hand so I threw in Deceptively Delicious . It is a really cute book, the cover art and colors are very retro and I found it instantly appealing.

The book is based on using vegetable purees to add nutrition to foods without adding funky taste. I decided to try out the Banana Bread recipe which uses a cauliflower puree. I was a bit skeptical, cauliflower has a very strong taste and I just couldn't imagine hiding the flavor of it.


So, first I had to make the puree which was very easy, I lightly steamed the cauliflower for 10 minutes, let it cool and then pureed it in my food processor with some water. It came out very smooth and it was pretty quick.


I then followed the recipe which included a combination of whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour, brown sugar, egg whites (I used 1 whole egg instead of the 2 egg whites the recipe called for) and both baking powder and baking soda. The directions were really simple, combine the dry ingredients, combine the wet ingredients and then add the dry ones to the wet ones.



20 minutes later I had a nice loaf of banana bread. You can see in the photo, it was a little moist and dense toward the bottom of the loaf, maybe I needed to bake it a little longer. It was a little bit on the grainy side for my taste because of the whole wheat flour, but that makes it much healthier. My family ate it up pretty quick, It was really good sliced and toasted with a little butter.

I was amazed at how the cauliflower just melded in with the bread and there really was no trace of cauliflower flavor. There was not a whole lot of it in there, just 1/4 cup for the whole loaf. I would definitely say it was a success. I'll try it again and maybe play with the proportions a little to lighten it up the texture a bit.