Sunday, November 05, 2006

Banana Chocolate Chip Bread


I am often in the uncomfortable position of having several bananas gone past their prime in my kitchen. They sit in my fruit bowl slowly turning a darker shade of brown. What do I do? I can't throw them away. That's good food for god's sake! So I desperately look for something to do with them. Smoothie? No, Abbie won't drink them. Ah, banana bread, you say. That's an excellent idea. However, most banana bread recipes call for one measly rotten banana. I have four on the counter, and two I threw in the freezer. I need more banana investment here! So I made something up. This is hardly bread. I should call it cake. It has chocolate. It uses THREE bananas. I feel so resourceful.

Banana Chocolate Chip Bread
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3 mashed ripe bananas
1 1/2 tsp. good vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus 1 tbs.
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a bread loaf pan, or 4 mini pans.
In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs. Add bananas and vanilla; blend well. Whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl. In another bowl, mix chocolate chips, pecans, and 1 tbs. flour. Beat the flour mixture into the banana mixture just until combined. With a rubber spatula, mix nuts and chocolate into batter. Spread evenly into pan or pans.

Bake for 50-60 minutes for one loaf, or 30 minutes for mini loaves, until toothpick inserted in center
comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes. Remove from pan. Cool completely.

2 comments:

Grandma Nancy said...

Hi. You guys just left and I miss you all a lot. I decided to come up here and eliminate as many old emails as I could. I still had yours with the link to this site, so I decided to add it as a bookmark. While I was here, I noticed the banana bread recipe you mentioned. It looks good. I think I will try it sometime.
Talk to ya soon, Mom

Grammy said...

I like the idea of using 3 bananas, so I tried your b.bread recipe. Used chopped up dried plums, from last summer, instead of c.chips. Can now use it for an adult breakfast bread. Thanks for the idea.
Grammy