Chocolate Banana Bread

Chocolate Banana Bread

This past weekend, I took a weekend trip to visit Gina and my mom. On Sunday, Gina and I ran the Rock and Roll San Diego 1/2 marathon. After we got home, Gina made me bread to take back to school. It is amazing. I've never had banana bread that stayed this moist or was this delicious. I've tried countless banana bread recipes ranging from some to yogurt in the batter, to other various substiutions. Nothing compares to how good this bread is was. 

This is my new favorite banana bread recipe. I was so surprised by how good this bread came out. It has just the right amount of sweetness to make for a perfect breakfast. I will be adding cocoa powder to all of my banana breads from now on. 

Gina divided and doubled the batter to make a loaf of bread for me, and muffins for my mom to take to her Monday morning meeting. 

The batter was large enough to make 24 muffins as well as a loaf of bread. 

I can't say personally how good the muffins came out, but the bread was amazing.
One trick to making amazing bread is to not over mix the batter. You want all of the ingredients just combined without any lumps.

If you have bananas and you like chocolate and bread, then go and make this. You will be in love. I can't promise how long the bread will last in your home. But it will stay fresh for up to a week in a air tight container. Maybe longer, but the bread in my house was gone before then.

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter
3 Bananas
1 Cup White Sugar
1 3/4 Cup Flour
1/4 Cup Cocoa Powder
2 Eggs
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/4 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/2 Cup Mini Chocolate Chips

Directions:

1) Preheat Oven to 350.
2) Melt the butter. Mash the bananas. Cream with sugar.
3) Add flour, cocoa powder and eggs. Stir.
4) Add rest of the ingredients (until the chips) and mix.
5) Fold in the chips. Feel free to try white chocolate or peanut butter chips! Can also mix in walnuts or dried fruit.
6) Pour into a 9x5 pan. Bake for roughly one hour.

We doubled the recipe in one bowl (but with only 5 bananas). This was plenty for 24 muffins and a loaf of bread. We definitely could have made a few more muffins with in but the batter was too delicious (and we were too lazy to dirty another pan). The muffins needed about 20 minutes to cook.