Vegan Gluten Free Chickpea Banana Date Bread

What do you do when you have a gluten free husband and vegan daughters at home? Go mad? No not really :) You improvise and tweak your recipes.  Thank god for Indian food which is basically vegan and gluten free (if you do not consider the cream, ghee). Over the Easter weekend, while memorising my script for the presentation for my docent training at the Malay Heritage Centre here in Singapore, my husband requested me to do a gluten free vegan banana bread.

Now, there are many varieties of gluten free flour available today. That's wonderful to hear isn't it? I can't imagine saying this 10 years ago. But, my husband especially requested for besan flour which is the Hindi word for chickpea flour, having tasted besan nut bread during recent his trip to Bangalore, India.   So, I tried it today. It came out quite alright. Not my standard banana cake but he was thrilled and even took photos of it to show to his dad in Pune, India. That's all that matters. I made it for him and he was satisfied with the end results.

​I have posted the recipe here but let me warn you that there is no added sugar (you can add half a cup of brown sugar) and it carries the besan lentil taste, if you don't mind. 

Yields 1 loaf
Wet Ingredients
4 small baby bananas or 2 medium bananas, peeled and mashed
6 dates pitted and chopped roughly
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla essence

Dry Ingredients
1 cup besan flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup mixed nuts 

Top : 2 tbsps oats and 2 dates, pitted and chopped roughly

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180 deg C.
2) Mix all the wet ingredients in a bowl and the dry ingredients in another bowl.  
3) Mix them both together lightly.
4) Spray a loaf tin with olive oil/ canola oil cooking spray.
5) Pour the batter in and top with the oats and chopped dates.
6) Cook in the middle shelf of the oven for 20 mins. Remove and serve warm with a light tea.