Whole Grain Cinnamon Banana Cake with Gluten Free Version

Wow. These little cakes are really tasty. Shocking enough they have NO oil or butter in them, making them a lot better for you than most cakes. Trust me they don't need it, the bananas in the cupcakes make them really moist, and more then make up for the lack of fat. Along with being "healthyish" they taste really good.

I made the cake for Isaiah's second birthday party. It was adapted from Two Peas and Their Pod's recipe. I mainly just changed the flour to be whole grain flour, and the sweetener to be turbindao sugar instead of refined sugar. In the future I will experiment with agave in this recipe. You can see that the cake in the pictures is frosted, but the cake doesn't need frosting. Since it was a birthday cake I wanted to decorate it, so I frosted it with a light whip cream frosting. If you do end up frosting the cake, omit the topping.

My next project with this recipe is to make it with agave. Truthfully I am still out of it. I ran out of it making the raspberry jam, and being pregnant and tired, didn't make the effort to go get it. You will be happy to know I have picked up a gallon FINALLY.

Banana Cinnamon Cake

3 ripe bannanas mashed

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 C turbinado sugar or raw sugar

1 3/4 C whole grain flour blend**( equal parts, spelt, brown rice, and barley)

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1 C cinnamon chips*

Topping:

3 T turbinado sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1. Mash the bananans well with a fork in a big bowl.

2.Add in the vanilla and both of the eggs. Stir the mixture until the eggs are fully incoporated.

3. Add in the flour, baking soda, turbinado, and cinnamon. Carefully mix all of the ingredients together.

4. In a seperate bowl add 3/4 C of the cinnamon chips, reserving the rest for the topping. Toss them with 2 T whole grain flour. This helps them so they don't all sink to the bottom and are evenly dispersed throughout the batter.

5. Fold in the cinnamon chips.

6.Pour batter into baking dish. Top with the cinnamon sugar mixture and remaining cinnamon chips. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

* I found the cinnamon chips at Harmon's

To make this completely gluten free:

Sub out the whole grain flour mix, (which is a mix that is low in gluten, I have found that I am able to tolerate it, in small amounts) and add

1/2 C almond flour

1/2 C sorghum flour

1/4 C tapioca

1/4 C cornstarch

1 scant teaspoon xantham gum