Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

For a very long time (5+ years?), Ryann’s favorite baked goods is chocolate chip cookies. Some weeks ago, in a bout of shelter-in-place boredom I started quizzing about which baked goods he likes better. I went down the list with cinnamon rolls, sourdough bread, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cherry blondies, dutch baby pancakes, and chocolate chip banana bread. I really thought chocolate chip cookies would be the undisputed winner but in a surprising plot twist, banana bread took first place.

Ingredients:

• 2 very ripe bananas, peeled and mashed. You should have about 1.25 – 1.5 cups, if not then add another banana in there. Also, I usually wait until nearly the entire skin is brown so the mashing is much easier.
• 0.33 cup unsalted butter, melted. If you want to take your banana bread game to the next level, brown your butter by letting it melt in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until you see brown spots which is the milk solids browning. When you use this in your banana bread, it will will impart nutty flavor.
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 0.5 cup brown sugar (light or dark is fine)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1.5 cups all purpose flour
• 0.75 cup plus 2 tbsp semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a loaf pan. This recipe calls for a 4 x 8 inch loaf pan, but I only have a 9 x 5 inches so my banana bread often looks rather short but the point here is that you can use whatever size you have on hand. You can even bake these as muffins if preferred, just fill up about three-quarters of the way full to account for the rise in the oven, and check it at 15 minutes to see if it’s done. If not, let it bake another 5 minutes. Repeat as necessary.
2. Put your mashed bananas in a mixing bowl. For convenience, you can use just the one bowl for the batter so feel free to mash your bananas in the same bowl. Bonus point: you can also just use one spatula. No whisk is absolutely necessary here.
3. Stir in melted butter, and then mix in the baking soda and salt. Stir in the sugar, egg, and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour until about half of the flour is incorporated then fold in the 0/75 cup of chocolate chips while you finish folding in the remaining flour. Make sure you don’t have any visible white streaks of flour but stop mixing once you get to that point. Over mixing can lead to tough banana bread.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and then sprinkle with the 2 tbsp of chocolate chips. This will make it look prettier. If you don’t care about the look, just eat them as a snack. Don’t worry, I won’t tell. Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center.
5. You can let this cool completely before serving but you can also serve it warm. There’s no wrong answer here. It’s especially delicious if you slather a slice with more butter. On day 2, I “refresh” it by toasting under the broiler for a bit and then slather with butter. But realistically, this banana bread rarely lasts more than a day in our house.

Adapted from Simply Recipes.