Banana Bread x 2

Banana bread always reminds me of home. My mom makes it all the time and her recipe is seriously the best ever! The other day I was craving some of banana bread but I didn't have her recipe on hand so I went searching for a simple recipe online. I found this recipe which turned out super simple and scrumptious! Though, next time I would add about 1/2 cup of walnuts to it. I also only used 3/4 cup of sugar instead of one cup.

I use Splenda no calorie sweetener with my coffee and I've always wanted to try baking with it. Since I planned to make two loafs of banana bread, I decided I would make one with real sugar and the other with Splenda to see how they compared. There are two big differences when using Splenda instead of sugar. First, Splenda does not brown like normal sugar, so in order to get that same browning effect you should lightly spray the batter with cooking spray just before placing in the oven. The second difference deals with the bake time; recipes made with Splenda don't need to cook as long as recipes made with sugar. The Splenda website explains how to correctly adjust the bake time in regards to what you are cooking. The recipe I made here suggests cooking the bread for one hour; the Splenda version I made only took 50 minutes.

[Left: made with sugar/Right: made with Splenda]

I haven't tried the sugar version of the banana bread yet, but the Splenda version was super delicious! You would never know there wasn't real sugar in it!

:)