Chocolate-Walnut Banana Bread
This is a recipe I found in the chatelaine magazine of March 2011. The bread is very tasteful and moist.
Makes 12 slices
Prep time 5min
Total time 1 hour 40 min
Ingredients
- 3 large very ripe bananas
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup whole-wheat flour
- 2 tbsp ground flax seeds (optional)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tbsp dark rum (optional)
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Lightly oil or spray a 9 x 5- in. loaf pan.
- Mash bananas in a medium bowl. They should measure about 1 1/2 cups.
- Stir both flours with ground flax seeds, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.
- Beat butter with sugar in a large bowl until combined, then beat in eggs, rum and vanilla. Stir in Bananas. Using a wooden spoon, stir in flour mixture just until combined. Do not over mix.
- Gently fold in chocolate chips and walnuts.
- Scrape batter into prepared pan. Smooth top.
- Bake in centre of oven until a cake tester or skewer inserted into centre of loaf comes out clean, 50 to 60 min.Cover loosely with foil for the last 15 min if top browns too quickly.
- Remove pan to a rack to cool for 10 min.
- Run a knife around inside of pan to loosen loaf.
- Carefully turn out loaf, then turn top-side up on a rack.
295 calories per slice.
Bread will keep well at room temperature up to 3 days or frozen up to two months.
Variations
Keep it simple:
Omit chocolate chips and walnuts.
Dress it up:
Melt 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips and drizzle over baked loaf.
Kitchen Tip: Got more ripe bananas than you can bake? Peel and freeze in freezer bags or simply put in the freezer with peel on. When ready to bake, defrost and use all the banana pulp, including the black liquid that appears if peel was left on – it makes the bread even more flavorful.