Whole Wheat Avocado Bread

I didn’t have actual lemons, so I didn’t put in lemon zest, but hopefully that won’t make too much of a difference. I adapted this recipe from Kale & Cardamom. The adaptations were really only because I didn’t have the ingredients and I’m too cheap/broke to go buy them. :X I’m sure it would taste better with the stuff I left out, but work with me here. I’m kinda poor and pressed for time. ;_; I also skimped on some of the sugar since my friends/neighbors/I tend to like food that’s on the healthier side of the spectrum.

So with this recipe (and with the upcoming Whole Wheat Applesauce Muffins), I did something I’d never done before and gave away a slice + a muffin to my neighbor before taste-testing it first. This was largely because he was grilling up a bunch of chicken and asked if I wanted some (and of course, I can’t say no to food <3 ), but when he came back, I had just taken the muffins out of the oven and hadn’t actually tried either yet. He said he’d be fine with being my taste-tester though and said both were really good, despite his initial comments about avocado bread being weird. (He’d never heard of it/had it before, but said it reminds him of zucchini bread.)

Please don’t mind the fork marks. :X I have no toothpicks for the toothpick test, haha. I also discovered that I have no talent in the art of mashing avocados, so this is more of a “chunky whole wheat avocado bread.” It’s still super good.

Whole Wheat Avocado Bread

Ingredients:
(Makes 1 9×5 loaf.)
-2 cups whole wheat flour
-1 tsp baking soda
-1/4 tsp salt
-2 tbsp ground flax seeds
-6 tbsp water
-1 ripe avocado, mashed (~1 cup)
-1/4 cup EVOO (+ more for greasing pan)
-1/8 cup brown sugar
-2 ripe bananas, mashed
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-grated zest of 1 lemon
-1 tbsp lemon juice
-1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 350F with rack in middle. Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan with olive oil.
2) Whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl. In a small bowl, mix together ground flax seeds and water. Set aside.
3) In a separate large bowl, beat mashed avocado, oil, and sugar until creamy and glossy, 3 to 4 minutes. Beat in flax mixture for another minute, then add banana, vanilla extract, lemon juice, and beat until combined.
4) Add in the flour mixture in three portions, taking care not to over-mix.
5) Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Mix together the 1.5 tbsp turbinado sugar (if you have it) and cinnamon and sprinkle over the top.
6) Bake for ~1 hour (I may have actually taken it out at 50 minutes), until it passes the toothpick test. Cool on a rack before slicing.