High Protein Pumpkin Bread

Does baking during the holiday jeopardize your goals? We have some tips to help you makeover your recipes but still get to enjoy them!

If your favorite thing to do during the fall and winter seasons is bake and eat warm treats fresh from the oven, we are kindred spirits.

A few tips to help you remake your favorite treats a little healthier include:

1-Add a scoop or two of protein powder to the mix

2-Reduce the sugar by 1/3

3-Replace some of the sugar with a sweetener of your choice

4-Swap out the flour for some ground flax seed (if you haven't tried the amazing cookies we made this way, you NEED to check it out)

5- Add extra egg whites (if you whip them first, you will get the angel food cake effect-fluffiness and volume)

6-Replace oil or butter with pumpkin or bananas

7-Replace butter with coconut oil (this works amazingly well for chocolate chip cookies)

Now, onto the newest recipe from our kitchen!

I wanted something with chocolate chips, and Noé wanted banana bread, so I combined all the things we wanted and came up with this! You can tell it's a higher protein recipe because the texture is a little bit different (I find that regular bread crumbs more than protein recipes), but not in a bad way. It comes out more cake-like than traditional bread recipes. This is one of my best experiments to date! Here's how you make it:

1 overripe banana

1-15 oz can pumpkin puree

1/2 c ground flax seed

1 c flour

1/2 c brown sugar (or substitute brown sugar splenda)

3 eggs

4 scoops protein powder

2 T vanilla

1 t baking soda

1/2 t baking powder

1 T cinnamon

1/2 t ginger

1/2 t nutmeg

Chocolate chips or nuts optional

1/2 c egg whites

First, I mixed up all the ingredients and stirred them together, except the egg whites. In a separate bowl, whip them until they hit stiff peaks, and then very gently fold them into the remaining mixture. Carefully transfer into a greased loaf pan and bake at 325 for about an hour.

Depending on the kind of protein powder you use, your treats might brown faster. Keep an eye on them and if that happens, turn down the temperature to 300 and just bake it longer.

I use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature just to be safe. For this recipe, I baked it for about 80 minutes until the internal temperature hit 180, or you can insert a skewer and wait until it comes out clean.

Enjoy!