Easy Slow Cooker Olive Oil Banana Bread (Plant Based)

Categories : baked sweets, desserts & sweet snacks, easy peasy, lent, Recipes, Slow Cooker @en, vegetarian or vegan

A plant based banana bread for hot, non-oven days. Easy to throw together and very delicious!

Itâ€™s been a veeeery hot summer in Greece. And itâ€™s still going strong as we speak. I popped over to London for a few days last weekend and I really hoped I would return to a cooler Athens. But no. Ok itâ€™s not as bad as it was a few weeks ago when we were hit by the biggest heatwave in over 30 years (which lasted over 10 excruciating days), but itâ€™s still way too hot for my liking. And that means no oven yet.

But what do you do when you want cake on a non-oven day? You enlist the help of the slow cooker. Iâ€™ve already shared a few slow cooker cakes here on the blog, as well as bread puddings and other desserts (some featuring bananas), and there are several classic Greek cakes in my book The Greek Slow Cooker as well (think gooey chocolate, orange and almond, coconut and semolina and more). So I think weâ€™re more or less covered on that front. Having said thatâ€¦ there is always, always, room for one more banana bread.

I hope you give it a try, and donâ€™t forget to tag me in your photos so I can share on stories! (@thefoodiecorner and #thefoodiecorner)

Ingredients

2 Tbs flax meal

4 Tbs (1/4 c) water

120 gr all purpose flour

30 gr whole wheat flour or anything you have leftover (I used a mix of rye flour and wholegrain spelt)

(alternatively you can use 150gr of all purpose flour instead)

50 gr oats, quick cooking

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

6 Tbs olive oil, mild tasting

5 Tbs peanut butter (100% natural)

4 Tbs honey or maple or agave syrup

2 Tbs coconut sugar (or brown)

300 gr banana (the blacker the better - weighed after peeling)

70 gr dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Step 1

Mix the flax meal with the water in a small bowl and set aside for at least 10-15 minutes to set.

Step 2

In a large bowl whisk the flour, oats, baking powder and salt.

Step 3

In another bowl whisk the olive oil, peanut butter, honey or syrup and coconut sugar, until incorporated. Add the banana and mash it into the mixture. It doesn’t need to be super smooth. Stir in the flax mixture.

Step 4

Transfer the wet mixture into the dry and fold until almost incorporated. Add the chocolate and continue folding just until you can’t see any flour. Don't overmix.

Step 5

Line the bottom of your slow cooker with some baking paper. If your pot isn’t non stick you might want to either grease the sides too, or use a large enough piece of paper so that it comes up the sides. Pour in the cake batter and smooth the top. Place a piece of kitchen paper (kitchen towel) under the lid (it shouldn’t touch the mixture) and cook on high for 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours. The time will depend on the appliance and the type of insert (metal or ceramic). Mine took 1 hr 50 minutes.

Step 6

Try the cake by inserting a toothpick or skewer in the middle. If it comes out clean or with a few dry crumbs it’s ready. Take the insert out of the base and set aside for 5 minutes.

Step 7

Remove the cake from the pot and place it on a rack to cool completely.

Note: If you have a 6.5lt pot you will need to increase the ingredients by 50% (e.g. where 2 Tbs use 3 Tbs - where 50 gr use 75 gr etc).

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Plant-Based, Date-Sweetened Chocolate Banana Oat Cake-Bars, in the Slow Cooker www.thefoodiecorner.gr Photo description: Chocolate Banana Oat Cake-Bars cut up and arranged (in the shape of the slow cooker) on a piece of grease-proof paper on a wire rack. To the top is a small bowl with cocoa powder, to the left of the photo is a bowl of dates, chocolate and banana chips on a linen napkin. To the bottom left are some small coffee cups.

2 Comments

Eha

27/08/2021

Living in Australia I seem to have made banana bread all mu life. Am not actually a baker – no sweet tooth and very health conscious – but the latter somehow is ‘essential’ here ! Yours is the most exciting variant I have on my books and I simply cannot wait to try . . . or suggest to others ! I actually do not use a slow cooker but am certain I can figure out suitable ‘old-fashioned’ oven temperatures . . . Having nearly lost my home two summers back to six months of bushfires, have truly been following the recent horror story in Greece . . . blessings . . .
- Reply
  Eleni {The Foodie Corner} Ελένη
  
  27/08/2021
  
  Hey Eha! Thanks so much, this summer was truly horrific. Sorry to hear you went through such an ordeal in the big fires in Australia; things are getting so bad, every year seems to be worse than the last. Sometimes you need a bit of normality and cooking does provide that doesn’t it? I wouldn’t call myself a baker either, so my cake recipes are all quite easy! If you don’t have a slow cooker you could check out my two oven baked banana breads (in the baked sweets category)! The emmer flour in the one version can be switched to spelt if that is easier to find. Take a look and see what you think, and if you still prefer this one then by all means feel free to adapt to conventional cooking, I think it will work fine. If it were me I would bake it at 180C conventional/160C fan assisted, for about 50-60 minutes. I think a good sized loaf pan would be 25cm long. Let me know how it goes!!