Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Baked Banana with Pumpkin Almond Butter

During my day job I reside in cubicle land. While I am there, working on my spreadsheets, I sometimes daydream about, and this may shock you, food. 

Unfortunately, sitting in a cubicle all day and food don't go well together which is why I must take the stairs six floors up to my seat, work out on my lunch break and weekends and seriously watch my calories.  Being 5'3 also has it's disadvantages. 

Then there is that pesky sweet tooth that keeps popping up.  Keeping with my sugar free theme I will share a dessert I came up as a marriage from two separate spots.  One was actually the baked bananas from Gina's Weight Watcher recipes and the other was from googling "pumpkin banana peanut butter" because I love all things pumpkin (and it reminded me of you, Cara!).  It brought me to to the Libby's website with a recipe for a pumpkin peanut butter sandwich so this morphed into pumpkin almond butter.


We eat a lot of bananas in my house and when one happens to escape with his life and gets to the fully ripe stage, I peel him and he goes in my freezer for when I need a ripe banana.  In this case I ended up having a fairly ripe fresh one but next time I will use frozen and let you know how it goes.  I also plan to try the baked banana part out on my toddler and see how she likes it.  I'm betting it is pretty kid friendly.


Baked Banana with Pumpkin Almond Butter
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 ripe banana sliced lengthwise
1 tsp agave
1-2 Tbsp pumpkin almond butter (recipe to follow)
Cinnamon, to taste
Directions

1. Preheat the oven or toaster oven to 400 degrees.

2. Spray a piece of foil with cooking spray and lay the banana slices on top. Fold the sides up so it makes a small tray but the top is open so you can see the banana.

3. Pour the agave on top and sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until the banana is hot and melty.

4. Top with a dollop of pumpkin almond butter. Yeowza!


Pumpkin Almond Butter
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup almond butter
1 Tbsp agave
2 Tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

Directions (this is a tough one)

1. Blend ingredients until smooth.

8 comments:

Cara said...

You must have known this would be the first post I'd open when checking into google reader tonight! I've got all the same issues including the sweet tooth. I totally want another dessert now :) What else will you do with the pumpkin almond butter? I would love to see it in some oats!

Joanne said...

Great dessert or morning eats. Super!

Dawn said...

I tried it in oats but it wasn't that pretty so I didn't do a photo. I messed up the steel cut oats thinking I could microwave them. Oops. I will try again. I want to do overnight oats and then top it with this. This morning I did a whole wheat bagel thin with pumpkin almond butter and banana. I got a pretty good photo I will post tomorrow.

Anh said...

This is such a perfect sweet recipe that is also healthy!! Love this. Thanks!

Lauren said...

Oh my gosh... this looks absolutely wonderful! Yummmm.

cellophanestarr said...

How much almond butter did you use? The recipe is missing something because it just says "1/2 almond butter"!

Dawn said...

Whoops! Sorry about that. It's half cup.

Lisa said...

Yeowza is RIGHT!!! I'm a fanatic about the almond butter part, and I've got the baked banana in front of me right now! Thank you for posting this! Delish!