50:35
Hey lovelies, today I've got something incredible for your sweet tooth. We are making this delicious chocolate swirl banana bread and it is so good. It's absolutely irresistible. Now, this recipe, like all of my recipes, can be found over on healthymealplans.com, our amazing meal planning site that allows you to browse more than 1,000 recipes, drag and drop them into your weekly meal plan, and then automatically generates your grocery list for the week. If you haven't already, I hope you will check it out. Now, without further ado, let's make some banana bread. So, the inspiration for today's video are actually these very overripe bananas. Last week, my toddlers love bananas. This week, not so much. So,
what I've ended up with are some very ripe bananas and you know that means it's time for some banana bread. But, I really, really wanted to try this chocolate swirl version and let me tell you guys, it's so worth the time invested. So, our first step here is just going to be mashed bananas. I'm going to be using three of these bad boys in my recipe. I'm just going to get in here with a fork. This is easier with a potato masher, I will just tell you, but I am fairly certain that my potato masher is now a toy in my kids play kitchen, so fork it is. Things I never thought I'd have to think about until I had kids.
All right, mashed bananas, check. Next, I want to go ahead and mix up my dry ingredients. I have got some all-purpose flour in my bowl and to that I'm going to add some baking soda and a good sprinkle of salt. I'll get that all whisked up so it's nice and well combined and then I'll set that aside. The next step is going to be preparing our wet ingredients and that starts with some butter. So, I've got half a cup of butter here at room temperature and I'm just going to go ahead and use my hand mixer to beat that all up until it's nice and light and fluffy. Next, it's time to add my sugar to this.
Now, I should mention this is inspired by my grandmother's classic banana bread recipe. I've shared it before on the channel. It's incredible. But, she always used white sugar in her banana bread. That being said, if you wanted to use either brown sugar or half and half, both would work really well here. You get sort of more caramely flavor if you use the brown sugar. But, I like to stay true to my grandmother's roots, so I'm sticking with white sugar in this recipe. I'll go ahead and use my hand mixer to beat my sugar in with my butter, and then I'll add the rest of my wet ingredients. So, I have got a cup of milk here, two eggs, I've got some vanilla extract, which of course always makes everything more delicious,
and finally, my mashed banana. You're looking for about a cup of mashed banana, which is usually about three mashed bananas. And then I'm just going to get in here with my mixer and give that another good whirl. At this point, it's time to add my dry ingredients to my wet ingredients. I'm just going to mix that once more until I've created a lovely batter. And then, I'm just going to divide it in half because I'm going to turn half of this yummyness into chocolate banana bread batter. Oh, yeah. You know we can't possibly be bad. So, I'm adding about a quarter cup of cocoa powder to half the batter, and I'll again just use my hand mixer to blend that in until it's nice and well mixed. At this point, I am ready to assemble my
loaf. So, as you can see, I've got a nice loaf pan here. I've greased it really liberally, which is important because you do not want this to stick to the pan. That would be bad news. You definitely want it to pop out really nicely. So, greasing it liberally is a very good idea. And then what I'm going to do is use my ice cream scoop to alternate my batter. So, I'm going to start with my classic batter, and then right next to that, I'm going to add some of my chocolate batter. And then I'll alternate that scoop by scoop until I've used all my batter. And then once I've got all of my batter transferred into my loaf pan, I'm just going to take a knife and give this a little bit of marbling. You don't want
to overdo it because you don't want to actually mix those together. You just want to make sure that they get a really cool pattern in them. And then the final step here, which is optional but I think totally delicious, is going to be to add a whole heaping helping of chocolate chips right on top of my batter. These are going to add even more decadence to this amazing dessert. As though banana bread could get even better. At this point, I am ready to get this into the oven. I've got a preheated to 350° and I'm going to let it bake for between 1 hour and 1 hour 20 minutes. You'll know it's ready when you stick a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean. That's how you'll know it's fully cooked.
All right, my friends. The wait was so worth it because it smells amazing. It's so chocolatey in this kitchen right now and I'm so excited. It's a really, really important with a loaf like this to wait until it's completely cool, especially one with this much chocolate on top because you don't want that chocolate just to melt all over the place. So you are going to want to wait at least 30 minutes before slicing it up, but then you can just go bananas. Yay! When you cut into this loaf, you won't believe how beautiful it is. The swirl pattern is so gorgeous and of course it tastes even better than it looks.
Oh, yeah. The effort has been rewarded, my friends. Mhm. It's so good. I hope you guys love this recipe as much as I do and that you will give it a try for yourselves. If you do, be sure to tweet me, Instagram me, or Facebook me a photo cuz you know how much I love seeing your kitchen creations. Remember, this recipe, like all of my recipes, is available on healthymealplans.com, our amazing meal planning site that allows you to browse more than 1,000 recipes, drag and drop them into your weekly meal plan, and then automatically generates your grocery list for the week. What could be easier than that? Thank you guys, as always, so much for watching. And finally, if you haven't already, be
sure to subscribe because there is lots more deliciousness where this came from.
