The first time I had ever heard about banana bread was from an American friend in Paris way back in the ‘80s. The combination of bread and bananas sounded pretty weird. You put bananas on bread? What’s next, orange bread? “You’ve never had banana bread?” my friend asked in astonishment, looking at me as if I had a deprived childhood.
“No” i answered, “can’t be” she added “it’s the best treat in the world”. It was hard to explain that for most of my life I only knew three types of bread, white bread, dark brown bread and Shabbath challah. In Paris I became familiar with a few more types of bread; I fell in love with baguettes. However, banana bread didn’t sound appetizing. When I visited my friend a few days later, next to the coffee she served me a slice of something, it wasn’t clear whether it was really dense bread or cake. “Very tasty” I said after the first bite, “it sure is she answered “it’s banana bread”. Since banana bread is one of my teenage son’s favorites, and chocolate is up on the list too, I decided to combine both and make chocolate banana bread.
Ingredients
4 ripe bananas, mashed
7 TBS butter, melted
¾ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 TBS cocoa
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
½ cup pecans, broken
Heat oven to 350 F/ 180 C. In a mixer bowl with flat beater cream butter and sugar using high speed. Add eggs and continue mixing, slow speed, until combined. Add mashed bananas and vanilla and mix until blended. Add all dry materials but pecans and mix slowly only until joined. Add pecans mix lightly.
Grease and flour 9x5 loaf pan. Pour batter. Bake 60 min until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean.
