Bite-sized filled balls with the flavour of banana bread — that specific, comforting taste of over-ripe banana baked into something soft and sweet. A date-and-oat shell holds a creamy banana filling, and the whole thing is small enough to eat in two mouthfuls.
Why banana bread tastes the way it does. The magic is in the ripeness. As a banana ripens, enzymes break its starch down into sugars and the fruit produces isoamyl acetate and related esters — the aroma compounds we recognise instantly as “banana”. A green banana has almost none of them. This is why every banana bread recipe insists on the black, unlovely fruit at the bottom of the bowl, and why a filling built on ripe banana tastes of the cake rather than of the raw fruit.
What is actually in them. Dates for the sweetness and the body, gluten-free oats for a soft, crumb-like texture, nuts, and a banana-flavoured nut-butter centre. No refined sugar, no dairy, no egg — the things that usually make a banana bread off-limits for half the room.
How they behave. Filled balls are softer than the bars and warm up faster. They are excellent at home from a tin and slightly fragile in a rucksack in August; if you are carrying them, a small hard container helps.
Good moments for them. Mid-morning with tea. In a lunchbox. Handed round after a walk, when a whole bar is too much and one ball is exactly right. Two of them alongside a coffee makes a passable stand-in for breakfast on a rushed morning — though not a substitute for a real one.
Contains nuts and oats. Vegan, organic, gluten-free, no palm oil, no soy, no lactose. Available at Só Verde, an organic concept store in Foz, Porto.
treatfuls
treatfuls
treatfuls
treatfuls
