Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Yesterday, I decided to follow a recipe out of Joanne Chang’s cookbook based on her Boston bakery, Flour. This cookbook has tons of amazing pastry recipes from croissants to tarts to wide varieties of breads. Apparently, this banana bread recipe is famous at the Flour bakery, so I decided to bake it and add some chocolate chips to the mix. After the bread is done baking, the chocolate chips melt perfectly into the bread, adding to the moisture and sweetness.

Here is the recipe: 

• 1 1/2 C unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 C plus 2 tbl sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 C oil
• 3 1/2 bananas, very ripe, mashed
• 2 tbl creme fraiche or sour cream (I used sour cream)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 C semi-sweet chocolate chips 
  1. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.
  2. Butter the loaf pan and set oven to 350 degrees.
  3. In another bowl, with a hand mixer or standing mixer, mix together the eggs and the sugar on high speed until light and fluffy. For a standing mixer this will take about 5 minutes, for a hand mixer about 8 minutes.
  4. Slowly add in the oil on low speed.
  5. Add mashed bananas, sour creme, and vanilla extract on low speed.
  6. Add in the flour mixture by folding everything together with a spatula. Fold in the chocolate chips.
  7. Pour mixture into the greased loaf pan and bake for about 1 hour. 

This banana bread tastes amazing slightly warm and pairs great with french vanilla ice cream for dessert! Since this bread is so moist, be careful storing it for too long! Enjoy sooner rather than later :) Bon appetit!

xoxo, A