The Ultimate Chocolate Banana Bread

My theory about baked goods is that they taste best with sour cream in them. Sour cream adds a rich, tangy flavor, and its interaction with baking soda can lift your mood. It’s the secret ingredient in Jesse Sheehan’s chocolate banana bread. snackable bakes (one of my favorite baking books) and it’s so much fun. Consider a mash-up of chocolate cake and banana bread, with all the best characteristics of each.

Assuming you have bananas lying around the house, you probably already have the other ingredients around the house. (That’s what I do, too. I wait until it’s black before baking.) Next, I use cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, salt, vegetable oil, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and sour cream. Oh, and did I mention the chocolate chips? Oh yeah, it also has chocolate chips in it.

I don’t know about you, but when I see a bowl of batter like this, I feel like a 9-year-old standing at the sink, waiting to reach for the egg whisk and lick off as much as I can. Now that I’m an adult, I think I could eat all the dough with a spoon if I wanted to. But why do that when you can bake for an hour and get the following results?

It’s called breakfast. Please call it dessert. Call it a snack. Call it banana chocolate cake, chocolate banana bread, whatever you want. But whatever you want to call it, make sure you save a slice for me. Because everything that is ours is gone and we are sad.

The ultimate chocolate banana bread
from snackable bakes by jesse sheehan

cooking spray (or softened butter)
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch cocoa powder (I like Valrhona)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips (I won’t tell anyone if you add a little more)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 large egg (room temperature)
1/4 cup crème fraiche or sour cream
1 cup mashed bananas (about 2 ripe bananas)

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8.5 x 4.5 inch loaf pan with cooking spray or softened butter. Line the bottom with a large piece of parchment paper that stretches over the two long sides of the pan. (This will make it easier to lift the cake later.)

In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Add chocolate chips and whisk. (This way, it won’t sink to the bottom when baking!) In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar, oil, and vanilla for 30 seconds. Mix in the eggs, then the crème fraîche or sour cream, and finally the bananas. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until the last streaks of flour disappear. Be careful not to overmix or the bread will become hard.

Transfer the dough to the prepared pan and smooth out the surface. Bake for 65-70 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking. The bread is done when you insert a wooden skewer into the center and 1 or 2 moist crumbs come out.

Remove from the oven and let cool in the mold for about 20 minutes. Use the overhang of the parchment paper to lift the bread out of the pan and let it cool to room temperature before serving (if you can wait that long).

Adam Roberts I write a biweekly newsletter amateur gourmet (spin-off of his legendary blog (book of the same name), his latest book is food personwe loved it. Adam lives in a cabin in Brooklyn with his husband Craig and dog Winston.

thank you, Adam! we love you. Here are some more of Adam’s recipes. Best sticky buns ever, chocolate pecan pieand peppermint patty brownie.

PS Adam’s 7 Rules for Hosting a Dinner Party and a Brooklyn House Tour.

(Photo provided by: Adam Roberts. This post was first published on amateur gourmet. )