Healthy Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread
With a crunchy cinnamon topping and a sweet swirl throughout, this easy Healthy Banana Bread tastes like it came from the bakery. It’s made with whole wheat flour and unrefined sugar, so you can feel good about serving it for breakfast or snacks. Stir all the wholesome ingredients together in one bowl, then sprinkle on the extra cinnamon goodness. You’ll be buying extra bananas just to watch them go brown so you can make this recipe every week.
Kids in the Kitchen:
- Mash! Grab a big bowl and a masher or use a plate and a fork…kids love to mash bananas! This can be the only step they help with and that’s ok.
- Measure: To make the baking experience with kids less stressful, pre-measure most or all of the ingredients. If you want your child to practice measuring, you can leave one or two ingredients for them to measure
- Mix: Mixing is a great activity for kids. Make sure to use a really large bowl so you don’t have to worry about ingredients spilling over the side. I like to show kids how to hold the bowl with one hand and gently stir with the spoon or rubber spatula in the other hand. If you have more than one child helping, one child can use two hands to hold the bowl steady, while the other child (or children) takes turns stirring. I also like to use a rubber spatula to make sure you demonstrate how to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl and ensure all the flour is incorporated.
- Sprinkle: Kids can easily help with the crumble ingredients together and/or help sprinkle them over the top. Place the loaf pan over a piece of parchment paper or a sheet pan so you can easily gather and crumble that misses the top of the batter.
Subs and Tips for Making Healthy Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread:
- Gluten free: Use a cup-for-cup style gluten-free baking flour in place of the whole wheat flour in this recipe. Let me know in the comments if you give it a try!
- Egg free: I have not tested this recipe using an egg substitute. However, 2 flax “eggs” would probably work well as long as you add some baking time to make sure the loaf cooks through.
- Muffins? Again, I haven’t tried it, but I think you could bake the banana bread batter as muffins and they would turn out great. Just make sure to check the muffins after 12 to 15 minutes to make sure the batter doesn’t over bake.
- Lower added sugar? If you want to lower the amount of added sugar in this loaf, you could replace all or some of the maple syrup with applesauce or additional mashed banana.
- No oil? You can replace some or all of the oil in this recipe with applesauce.
- Simple banana bread: Leave out the cinnamon swirl and topping for a simple but still tasty banana bread. If you leave out the crumble, I would add an additional 1/2 tsp of cinnamon to the banana bread batter.
- Baking essentials: For a loaf pan recommendation and my other favorite baking products click HERE.
Healthy Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread
Full of wholesome ingredients but tastes straight from the bakery
Equipment
- 1 standard loaf pan
Ingredients
Cinnamon Crumble
- 1/2 cup flour I use white whole wheat
- 1/2 cup coconut sugar or brown sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- pinch of salt
- 1 Tbsp maple syrup or honey
- 1/4 cup neutral oil (avocado, vegetable, melted coconut)
Banana Bread Batter
- 1 1/2 cups mashed overripe banana about 3 medium bananas
- 2 large eggs
- 1/3 cup neutral oil (avocado, vegetable, melted coconut)
- 1/3 cup maple syrup or honey
- 1/2 cup plain yogurt I use whole milk but any kind will work
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp fine salt
- 1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour, regular whole wheat flour, or all-purpose flour
Instructions
Cinnamon Crumble
- In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and salt.
- Add the maple syrup and oil then mix until a wet, crumbly sand-like mixture forms. If the mixture is too wet, add a little more flour. If the mixture is too dry (won't stick together), add a little more oil. Set aside.
Banana Bread
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 9-by-5 inch loaf pan (or similar size). I like to add a parchment paper "sling' across the pan so the bread is easy to remove after baking.
- In a large bowl, mix mashed banana, eggs, oil, maple syrup, and yogurt, and vanilla until well combined.
- Stir in the cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir in the flour until just combined.
- Pour half of the banana bread batter into your prepared loaf pan. Sprinkle half of the cinnamon crumble evenly over the batter and then pour the remaining batter over the crumble. Use a butter knife to swirl the cinnamon crumble back and forth across the loaf.
- Gently tap the loaf pan on the counter a few times to even out the top. Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon crumble over the top of the loaf, pressing the crumbs gently into the batter to help them stick.
- Bake the loaf until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 60 to 65 minutes. Check the top half way through baking. if the cinnamon topping starts to get too brown, use a piece of aluminum foil to tent the top and prevent it from burning.
- Allow the loaf to cool at least 20 to 30 minutes before slicing. Store at room temperature for a day or two, in the fridge for 5 days, or freeze, well wrapped, for 2 months.
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Other awesome Banana recipes:
Banana Protein Muffins (with lentils)
This banana bread was delicious! My daughter had fun helping me make it by mashing the bananas, stirring the ingredients and sprinkling the topping! The crunchy topping and cinnamon swirl center was a nice treat! Thank you for another delicious, healthy & fun recipe!😊
I can tell this recipe is going to be delicious once I get it right. For some reason my loaf came out very dense and not fully cooked on the bottom after 70 minutes. The only difference was I used greek yogurt instead of regular. Could that have been the cause? Love all your recipes and will definitely try again.
Hi Morgan, So sorry the recipe didn’t work out for you. Usually, when I baked good is wet on the bottom and doesn’t rise well it means that the batter has too much liquid. You may have had too much banana I suspect. Let me know if I can help you trouble shoot in any other way. 🙂 Heather
This banana bread is amazing. We’ve made it 4 times at least since it was published. I can’t believe I haven’t made a comment yet. I am here at 6am wishing I had yogurt to make it again.
Thanks so much for leaving a review, Kelly!! xoxo Heather
This banana bread is unreal!! The cinnamon swirl topping makes it extra special. I used cup for cup gluten-free flour to make GF, coconut yogurt to make it dairy free and I didn’t have coconut or brown sugar so I used maple sugar for the swirl. SO tasty! Even my picky eater went back for seconds! Definitely going to make again!