I was hit by a powerful chocolate craving today. Normally I probably would've just made some sort of chocolate cake and called it a day. But we had a bunch of bananas that needed to be used, so I decided to dig out this Cook's Country recipe and give it a try.

I've never been a big fan of chocolate chip banana bread, but this double chocolate stuff is good! I always found the little nuggets of stabilized chocolate in chocolate chip banana bread off-putting in texture and jarring in flavour. Swapping out the chocolate chips for chopped dark chocolate deals with the textural issue and adding a chocolate-y backdrop by replacing some of the flour with cocoa nicely addresses the flavour component.
This makes a pleasingly chocolately loaf while still letting the banan come through. It's a nice balance.

My loaf was a bit crumbly and somewhat lacking in structural integrity, but that could've been due to the fact that I ran out of eggs and had to substitute a flax egg. (And then got impatient and didn't wait for the flax egg to properly gel.)

Double Chocolate Banana Bread

Slightly adapted from Cook's Country October/November 2020

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
• 1/4 c. Dutched cocoa
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• 4 bananas, mashed
• 1 c. brown sugar
• 10 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
• 2 large eggs
• 120g dark chocolate, chopped
• 1 Tbsp. sugar

Directions

1. Grease and flour a loaf pan and preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).
2. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, combine mashed bananas, brown sugar, butter, and eggs.
4. Stir dry ingredients into wet and mix until just combined.
5. Mix in chocolate.
6. Pour batter into prepared pan.
7. Sprinkle top with sugar.
8. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 70-80 minutes.
9. Remove from oven and cool in pan for 30 minutes.
10. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack for another 30 minutes before slicing.