Well it's almost fall, which means lots of tasty bread making & baking for this lil momma. First up is this chocolate chip banana bread, modified from Danilo Alfaro at Ask.com's recipe. This bread came out sooo good and so quick to make. And if you're anything like me, you probably always have an bunch of old mushy bananas lying around somewhere ;)
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 50 minutes
Makes one regular sized (9''x5''x3'') loaf of bread
What You'll Need:
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I mixed half white chocolate and half chocolate)
2 big dollops of Nutella
1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup all-purpose whole wheat flour
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground cinnamon
3 large, very ripe bananas
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 eggs
½ cup butter or shortening
Sidenote: I would have also added 1/2 cup of walnuts had I not noticed they expired a year ago. But they would have been a great add in!
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt and cinnamon.
3. Heat butter or substitute in microwave for about 40 seconds or until melted. Set it aside at room temperature to cool, but don't let it solidify again.
4. Peel the bananas. Using a potato masher, mash the bananas in a separate mixing bowl.
5. Add the vanilla extract to the mashed bananas.
6. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and then add the beaten egg to the banana/vanilla mixture.
7. Grease and flour a 9" × 5" × 3" baking pan.
8. Pour a tiny bit of the melted butter into the egg-banana-vanilla mixture and stir it in. Keep repeating, adding a slightly larger amount of the liquid butter each time until it is all incorporated.
IMPORTANT: Do not add hot melted butter to the egg-banana mixture as the heat from the butter will cook the egg and we don't want fried eggs in our bread!
9. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ones and mix no more than ten seconds. The batter will be visibly lumpy but that's good! It's extremely important not to overmix the batter, or the resulting bread will be too hard.
10. Once the liquid and dry ingredients have been combined, mix in Nutella and chocolate chips.
11. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake immediately.
NOTE: The dry and wet ingredients, respectively, can be mixed in advance, but as soon as the wet and dry ingredients have been combined with each other, the liquid will activate the baking powder and the batter must be baked right away.
12. Bake 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
13. Once the pan is cool enough to touch, carefully invert the pan and the loaf should drop right out. Let cool at room temperature & enjoy!
