I Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive! Also, Banana Bread

After spending the first week of the new year in the cold, merciless hands of the Flu, I’m finally back.

So I’m writing again, I finally started working out, and I’m cooking (a little). I haven’t practiced my piano-playing at all – that one’s a bit harder for me to get back into, when I haven’t had a piano in a long time in the first place and was never very disciplined about it to begin with –  but at least I’m, you know, Alive now. That’s exciting.

Last night I made banana-chocolate chip bread, courtesy of the three incredibly overripe bananas sitting on top of the microwave. Mmmmmmmmm delicious. I was a little leery the first time I tried it, because I thought I was a bad baker. I kept trying a recipe for knock-off Cheddar Bay Biscuits from a restaurant-copycat cookbook, and every batch turned out dry.

But then I tried this recipe for banana bread and realized I wasn’t a bad baker. I just had a bad recipe.

This, however, is a fantastic recipe. Moist and chocolatey-slash-banana-y and extra delicious if you scrape a little butter across it and nuke it for fifteen seconds.

What You Need

• 2 C all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 overripe bananas, mashed
• 1 T milk
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 C (1 stick) butter, softened
• 1 C sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 C chocolate chips

What to Do

1. Preheat oven to 325 and prep a 9×5 loaf pan.
2. In one bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and baking powder. In a second bowl, mix bananas, milk, and cinnamon. In a third bowl – the biggest, because everything’s going to end up in here later – mix the butter and sugar.
3. Add the eggs to the butter mixture one at a time and beat well. Stir the banana mixture into the butter mixture. Then stir the dry mixture in until the whole thing is well-blended and doughy.
4. Fold in the chocolate chips. I don’t really measure. I just shake the bag into the dough until it looks chocolate-chippy enough.
5. Scrape batter into loaf pan and cook until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Or at least clean of banana – obviously the chocolate chips are going to be pretty melty at this point, so don’t worry if your toothpick comes out with chocolate all over it. The original recipe says 70 minutes, but I found mine needed an extra 10 before the toothpick came out clean.
6. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
7. Enjoy!

You can find the original recipe here.