Vegan Marbled Banana Bread (Gluten Free option)

This vegan marbled banana bread perfect answer to the question – am I in the mood for regular banana bread, or chocolate banana bread?  Super easy to make, incredibly moist & tender, and oh so delicious, this will quickly become your new go-to banana bread recipe!

I don’t know about you, but I can barely remember how I felt about banana bread pre-March 2020.  Obviously since then, there is no trendier baked good.  And because of that, I feel like we’ve all tried every version of it – plain, chocolate, peanut butter.. filled with fruit, nuts, chips.. it’s exhausting.  And even after all that, half the time I’m staring at ripe bananas on my counter, I STILL can’t decide which version I want.

Thus – my vegan marbled banana bread was born.  The perfect recipe for us indecisive eaters.  What I love about this bread is you can marble is like I’ve done here so every bite gives you a bit of both flavors, OR if you have kids or family members or roommates who want a different version of it than you do, you can fully split and do one half one way and the other half another way and each be satisfied.

And each part can still be customized to your own liking!  Add walnuts to the regular part, add chocolate chips to the chocolate part.  Add coconut flakes to the whole thing, and peanut butter chips over the top.  Decide you’re actually in the mood for 75% chocolate and 25% regular and alter the amounts!  THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER*

*or your Vegan Marbled Banana Bread

Okay I’m too excited.  Let’s do this thing.

How To Make It:

Making banana bread is so fun, and so simple.  Start by mashing up your bananas and measuring out 1½ cups.  I find this takes around 3 large bananas, sometimes I need to open a 4^th to get to the full amount (and then I get to eat the rest of the 4^th one while baking!).  Leave a little texture in the bananas, you want them mashed but not like baby food smooth.  See my consistency in the first photo below.

Add your liquid ingredients to the mashed banana bowl – non-dairy milk, neutral oil, vanilla extract, white sugar, and brown sugar.  Mix up until combined, as you can see in the second photo below.  Then add in (optionally) gluten free flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, and mix again, which takes us to the third photo below. 

Now the fun part – making half of it CHOCOLATE!  Measure out ¼ cup non-dairy milk in a separate bowl and heat it until it’s hot.  Mix in 4 tbsp of cocoa powder, it will make a gloppy, gluey substance.  Quickly (while the chocolate is still warm) mix in half of the banana bread batter and combine fully with the chocolate mixture until it is all chocolatey. 

Personally, I’d recommend adding chocolate chips to at least this portion to make it extra chocolatey.  If you want to add to just the chocolate half, ½ cup should be perfect.  If you want to add to the whole batter, do ½ cup in each.  I realize the photos do not have chocolate chips inside it, that was a design choice I made for the photos, but taste-wise I think the chips add a lot to the final product!

Now the EXTRA fun part – putting it together in the pan!  You have a few options here.  One is like I said above, if you want the loaf to be fully half and half so you can share with someone who has different tastes than you, just spoon half the batter into one side of the pan and half into the other.  One is to fully marble in a swirly way, layer each type on top of one another, do them in thin layers so you can get 2-3 layers out of each, then use a knife or toothpick to make big swirls around the inside once it’s all layered.  Finally you can do what I did here and make it more like color blocking, which I do by just doing one scoop at a time of each one, sort of like a messy checkerboard pattern. 

Put some chips over the top if you are into that kind of thing, and time to bake it!  Important – if you are following along with my photos, you may notice that I use binder clips to help keep the parchment paper in place. I take those off before sticking in the oven!

Check for doneness by sticking a toothpick in and waiting for it to come out with just crumbs, not wet batter.  My oven bakes this perfectly right around 49-50 minutes.  Once it’s out, let it rest in the pan for about 10 minutes, then move to a cooling rack. And that’s it! Time to eat vegan marbled banana bread!

Nutritional info can be found below in the Notes section below the recipe instructions.

Storage:

After the vegan marbled banana bread has fully cooled, seal in an air-tight container and keep at room temperature.  It will stay good around 5 days. 

Pro Tips & Tools:

• Make sure you are measuring your flour either by weight or using the spoon and level method.  Do not scoop directly from the container, as you will wind up with too much! This is so important! If you want to buy a pre-made gluten free flour blend, make sure it’s King Arthur’s Measure for Measure Gluten Free Flour, it is BY FAR the best one for my recipes, NOT Bob’s Red Mills or any others. If you want to make a homemade blend, here is a link to the one I use.
• Make sure you measure your liquid ingredients using liquid measuring cups.  This will ensure accuracy!  I love this set.
• If you are using chocolate chips, make sure they are vegan!  I love these for dark chocolate chips, and these for semi-sweet.

Ingredients Needed:

• Bananas – 3 large ones should give you enough, but sometimes I need part of a 4^th
• Non-dairy milk – any will do, I usually use soy or almond
• Neutral oil – I always use grapeseed
• Vanilla extract
• Brown sugar & granulated sugar – I think the mix of both here is really important to the taste and the consistency. If you are trying to cut back on your sugar intake, I love using this Monkfruit Sweetener in place of the granulated sugar.
• Flour – Make sure you are measuring your flour either by weight or using the spoon and level method.  Do not scoop directly from the container, as you will wind up with too much! This is so important! If you want to buy a pre-made gluten free flour blend, make sure it’s King Arthur’s Measure for Measure Gluten Free Flour, it is BY FAR the best one for my recipes, NOT Bob’s Red Mills or any others. If you want to make a homemade blend, here is a link to the one I use.
• Baking powder – I recommend using baking powder that has no added aluminum. This one is my go-to.
• Cinnamon
• Salt
• Unsweetened cocoa powder
• Chocolate chips – optional, but highly recommended for the chocolate portion, or both portions, and over the top! If you want dark chocolate chips, these are my favorites, or for semi-sweet chocolate chips, I go for these.

What To Bake Next:

• Want more cake & bread for breakfast? Try this Vegan Coffee Cake, or this Vegan Mimosa Cake, or this Vegan Lemon Pound Cake.
• Want to use up some extra bananas? Try these Vegan Banana Bread Cookies, or these Vegan Banana Pancakes, or these Vegan Peanut Butter Banana Muffins.
• Want more fruit in your baked goods? Try these Vegan Lemon Bars, or these Vegan Blueberry Muffins.