Chocolate Banana Bread

1 ¾ cups all purpose flour

¼ cup cocoa

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup chocolate chips

2 eggs

½ cup butter, melted

½ teaspoon vanilla

3 very ripe bananas, smashed

½ cup nuts, chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 350ºF
Spray or grease a loaf pan
Combine the flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt
Mix very well
In another bowl, combine the mashed bananas, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla
Fold the wet mixture into the dry mixture until the batter is thick
Fold in nuts and chocolate pieces
Pour batter into the loaf pan
Bake about 50-65 minutes (the center should rise and a toothpick should come out clean)
Remove from the loaf pan and cool

This is some seriously good bread. This is called a ‘quick bread’ in that you don’t have to let it rise, beat it down, and let it rise again. The baking powder and soda react chemically to create carbon dioxide gas, instead of live yeast creating the gas. Quick breads tend to be denser than risen breads, but are still very tasty.

You can do a lot with this too. For a bakery style top, put some course sugar (brown sugar or even sugar crystals) on top. Instead of chocolate chips, I use small dark chocolate candies and chop them into one eighths. Just roughly, no need to be super exact.

You also need to think about if you like chunks of banana or just the taste. I just roughly mash my bananas with a fork. One pass and they are mostly mashed, but I like chunks. You can mash them until smooth. A fork on a plastic cutting board works perfectly for this.

Beware when checking for doneness. The If you insert a toothpick or cake tester and you hit a piece of chocolate (and you will), that will smear chocolate all over your tester. You are looking for batter, not chocolate. If there is any batter, then continue baking. The top should be firm and the openings should by mostly dry, not squishy.