BANANA BREAD? AT WORK?

Welcome back to Katie Cooks, where recipes are less “carefully developed” and more “what do I have in this kitchen and how aggressively can I substitute ingredients?”

This month, I had several bananas rapidly approaching the point where they either needed to become banana bread or enter the compost bin. I found a banana bread blondie recipe, started pulling everything out, and then discovered we had no vanilla.

We did, however, have chocolate chip cookie protein powder.

Same thing? Absolutely not. Did that stop me? Also absolutely not.

I swapped the vanilla for a scoop of protein powder and reduced the chocolate chips from ¾ cup to ½ cup because we're making healthier choices now. Please ignore the butter and brown sugar.

Ingredients:

2–3 ripe bananas

½ cup melted butter

½ cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 scoop chocolate chip cookie protein powder

1¼ cups whole-wheat flour

¼ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

Mash your bananas, then mix in the melted butter, brown sugar, egg, and protein powder. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Spread everything into a greased 8×8 pan and bake at 350°F for 30–34 minutes. Let cool and cut into 9 squares.

Or eat one directly from the pan while it's still warm. You've already replaced vanilla extract with protein powder. Formalities left the building several paragraphs ago.

Makes 9 servings: approximately 297 calories | 7g protein | 40g carbs | 14g fat each.

Recipe adapted from Our Balanced Bowl's Banana Bread Blondies.

Banana bread? At work? Dude, HELL YEAH. 🍌