Chocolate Banana Bread

These past couple of weeks have brought glorious, sunshine-y weather to London, which has made me feel like spring has sprung! To celebrate, I’ve been getting all domestic, cleaning out winter clutter from my closets, hoovering the floors and clearing away piles of coats and scarves that have taken over every possible surface in my room. While I may live to regret my actions (you know, March coming in like a lamb and out like a lion and all that), one thing about my recent bout of nesting that I will not regret is my newly found chocolate banana bread recipe.

Being unable to convert from standard to imperial, I eyeballed a lot
of the proportions from several different recipes and just kind of
winged it. I was a little nervous about experimenting in the kitchen and
kept my fingers crossed the whole time (which makes baking quite hard,
it turns out), hoping the good luck that’s driving this weather would
hold out for me. Fabulously, luck was on my side! 

Chocolate Banana Bread

You’ll need:

3 extra ripe bananas
1 c. granulated sugar (some recipes call for caster sugar, but this worked just fine)
8 tbsp. butter
2 large eggs
1 tbsp. milk
1 tbsp. ground cinnamon
2 c. all purpose flour (some recipes call for other kinds, but this worked just fine)
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 cup chocolate chips (optional but soooooo darn good)

1) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
2) Apply about 2 tsp. of your butter to a loaf pan. I used a 9x5x3 pan.
3) Cream the sugar and the butter in a large mixing bowl with a fork or whisk until fluffy.
4) Add eggs one at a time. Beat well.
5) In another, smaller bowl, mash the bananas with a fork.
6) Mix the milk and cinnamon with the bananas.
7) In yet a third bowl (get ready for lotsa dishes), mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and the salt.
8) Add the banana mixture to the sugar/butter mixture and stir until well combined.
9) Add the flour mixture to the banana and mix until flour disappears.
10) Add the chocolate chips.

Afterward, my newly cleaned flat smelled delicious for days and days AND I had amazing breakfasts and snacks for about a week. I think I’ll have to experiment with more recipes from now on, at least as long as this lucky weather holds out!