Splenda... Splendid?

There is a lot of debate out there on how to lose weight. No carbs, low-fat, blah blah. I am happy to sidestep the entire question and come to the general conclusion that we can all agree sugar is bad for you…although equally highly delicious. For years I have shied away from baking with Splenda (figuring it was a disaster waiting to happen), but I finally caved a couple weeks ago and tried it in a banana bread recipe, hoping that if the Splenda truly was awful the natural sweetness of the bananas might salvage things. Well, much to my surprise, the bread was great! The texture was fluffy like it was supposed to be (fluffy for banana bread anyway) and I honestly couldn’t tell that there wasn’t real sugar in it.

Of course, I made mine with chocolate chips, so the chocolate might have masked the lack of added sugar… but still, it’s a healthier version than it would have been! I thought I’d pass along the recipe to anyone who, like me, finds themselves in the curious-but-scared-to-try-it-before-someone-else-verifies-it-might-work stage of Splenda cooking.

Banana Bread (healthy substitutions optional…after all, bananas are healthy by themselves!)
½ cup butter, soft
1 cup granulated sugar (I used splenda, as copiously detailed above)
2 eggs
1 ½ cup all-purpose flour (I used whole wheat)
1 tsp baking soda
1tsp salt
2.5-3 bananas, ripe & mashed
½ cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I like dark chocolate chips for the darker flavor) or ½ cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 350. Combine butter, sugar, eggs. Sift together flour/soda/salt and add to butter mixture. Add mashed bananas and mix together. Add sour cream, vanilla, and chocolate chips (or nuts) and stir again. Pour into pan and bake approx one hour. Then enjoy!

I initially found that this recipe made slightly too much batter for one loaf but not quite enough for two. Annoying. (Let’s just say the first time around I succumbed to temptation to use all the batter, filled the pan to the brim, and 30 minutes later was staring in horror as clumps of batter overflowed, fell to the bottom of the oven, and burned to an ‘aromatic’ crisp). I later realized I had an abnormally big loaf pan, so I think for most this would do two loaves… or I’ve actually baked mine in a 9x9 pan. The recipe rises a decent amount (hence batter dripping/burning story above), so in a 9x9 pan it can pass as breakfast or can be served as cake as the mood strikes. I learned this culinary flexibility from my mother…to quote her wisdom on a similar culinary treat, if it’s after noon, it’s apple pie. If it’s breakfast time, it’s apple Danish!

Being a New Yorker now I don’t do a whole lot of meal cooking, but I found this website to be a good source for recipes. Many of the recipes are based around South Beach food (but don’t let the mention of healthy food scare you off); I found it a good resource for lots of different foods… I personally recommend the roasted Italian sausage soup – it was delicious!
http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2005/05/recipe-favorites.html

And the mentioned soup:

http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/03/roasted-italian-sausage-soup-recipe.html