Chocolate Coffee Banana Bread

Winter fruit selection is often depressing at best, so imagine my dismay when our dining hall ran out of oranges and decided to make do with mushy bananas. I'm okay with yellow bananas, but mushy is just beyond me.

Except, of course, in banana bread. So I did all of the other eaters a favor, and grabbed as many mushy bananas as I could without seeming too ridiculous. (Honestly, I think the staff are used to me doing ridiculous things at this point, like asking for a veggie omelet without the eggs.)

I made both regular and chocolate coffee banana bread in one morning.

Then, I began the quest for a suitable banana bread recipe. I had my mom's recipe tucked away in my email, but with the amount of butter it called for, it was much closer to cake. I needed something that wouldn't use up D's single dessert quota for the day.

After opening about 30 tabs worth of lowfat banana bread recipes in Safari, almost all of which called for margarine or applesauce, I finally found one. Ok, the original calls for applesauce, but I just used milk. 

Now, this is an incredible banana bread recipe, perfect just on its own. But when you run out of chocolate chips, and chocolate, the only solution is to take perfectly good banana bread, and add cocoa powder... and then eat said chocolate banana bread for breakfast the next day. And what is better than chocolate? Chocolate and coffee.. so I did it.

Once reinforcements arrived in the form of a care package, I realized I had to make this again, but with chocolate chips and cappuccino chips. Yes, I still ate it for breakfast.

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Chocolate Coffee Banana Bread

makes 1 large loaf

Equipment

loaf pan

2 mixing bowls + mixing instrument(s)

kitchen scale (optional)

measuring cups

butter melting device

oven

Ingredients

30g (2T) unsalted butter

375g banana (about 3 large or 4 small bananas)

125g (0.5c) white or (2/3c) brown sugar (it turns out either way)

1t vanilla

1 egg

60g (0.25c) milk (or substitute)

50g (0.5c) cocoa powder

30g (1/3c) ground coffee (or instant espresso)

0.5t regular salt OR 0.75t sea salt (to cut the bitterness of the coffee)

170g white whole wheat flour

1t baking soda

0.5t baking powder

0.5c cappuccino chips (or use all chocolate chips)

0.5c chocolate chips

Directions

1. Melt the butter in a large mixing bowl. While you're waiting, measure the flour, baking soda and baking powder out in your second mixing bowl.

2. Mash the banana really, really well into the butter. It should look liquidy with no chunks when you're done.

3. Add the sugar, vanilla, egg, milk, cocoa powder, coffee and salt to the banana and mix thoroughly.

4. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and stir until just combined.

5. Stir in the cappuccino and chocolate chips.

6. Place the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for 60 minutes at 350°F.

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