Gluten Free Banana Bread Bars Recipe

Classic banana bread baked in a 9x9 pan for portable, lunchbox friendly gluten free banana bread bars. Everyone will love them!

This recipe for gluten free banana bread bars is my exact gluten free banana bread recipe with one very small change. The only difference is that I baked the bread in a 9x9 pan instead of a loaf pan.

Baking the bread in a square pan produces a fluffy, moist banana bread bar that’s super portable and great for snacking.

The best part is that baking in a shallow pan means the bread bakes in half the time as it would in a loaf pan. Instead of taking about 55 minutes to bake all the way through, the banana bread bars are done in just under 30 minutes.

And if you’ve baked a lot of gluten free quick breads, you’ll know that you can’t slice into one when it’s still warm because it’ll crumble. With the bars, you can cut them and enjoy them while they’re still warm.

These banana bread bars are so moist and fluffy, it’s almost like eating cake. I’ve seen a lot of bar recipes that call for frosting or icing but for the sake of keeping this breakfast food, I decided to keep these plain.

If you really want an icing, there are plenty of cream cheese or vanilla icing recipes in my cookbook to choose from!

Key Ingredients in Gluten Free Banana Bread Bars:

Ripe Bananas – you want your bananas to be super ripe with the peels almost all brown/black. The riper they are, the sweeter they’ll be, and they’ll add more moisture and flavor to your bread.

Gluten Free Flour Blend – I use my nightshade-free gluten free flour blend in this recipe. It doesn’t contain xanthan gum, so I add ¾ teaspoon when mixing the dry ingredients. If you use a 1:1 flour that contains xanthan gum, omit the amount called for in the recipe.

Milk – you can use regular milk in this recipe, or you can use an unsweetened dairy free milk instead.

Personally, I almost always bake my quick breads with unsweetened coconut milk beverage because half my household is lactose intolerant and dairy free milks work really well in gluten free quick breads.

Feel free to use your favorite dairy free milk, just be sure to use one that isn’t flavored. If the milk you use has added sugar, you can reduce the amount of sugar in this recipe by ¼ cup.

Can I add mix ins?

Yes! Feel free to add up to 1 cup of mix ins – chocolate chips, nuts, or dried fruit would all be great in this recipe.

Enjoy!

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