chocolate peanut butter banana bread

You see, yesterday I promised Ryann I'd have an activity for her when she woke up from nap.  I had a little plan, and I needed to print some stuff off my computer.  Except then I remembered in my file deleting frenzy that I most likely deleted the driver for my printer, because the stupid thing won't print.  So instead of reinstalling the driver I thought it would be a much better idea to use up the aging bananas on our counter and bake.  But I didn't want to just bake the old regular stuff because, well, who the heck knows why.  I for some reason decided on muffins.  And I found these.  Which sounded great.   But I wanted to change the recipe up a bit.  Because you know, I'm great at making up my own recipes (NOT AT ALL).  And after all that I remembered I HATED making muffins, because who wants to take the time to spoon batter into a million different cups?  Not lazy me.

Are you still with me?

So then I decided I'd just make bread.  And I found this recipe.  Which also sounded pretty good, except I didn't have 4-5 bananas, I had 3 (but they were HUGE so the probably counted as 4-5).  And I really wanted to get some oats in the recipe for no apparent reason (maybe to pretend it was healthy?  ha.).  And somehow, I ended up with the following.

I failed to follow my own recipe correctly, and added in too much milk, therefore I threw in a couple more handfuls of oats to soak up the extra milk, which means my loaf of bread was DENSE.  Thus, I undercooked it trying not to completely scorch the outside.  And then we cut into it before it was completely cooled and I think that was a bad idea.  But even with all that the loaf is already half gone today, so I'm going to deem it a success.  :o)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Bread
adapted from How Sweet Eats

Ingredients

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter at room temp
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 large ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup dark chocolate chips (plus a few extra to sprinkle on top if you'd like)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, cocoa, cinnamon and salt in a bowl and set aside.
3. Cream butter and peanut butter in the bowl of an electric mixer.  Add sugars and beat until fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla, mixing until combined.  Add bananas and mix.
4. Add dry ingredients to your wet ingredients slowly, mixing until just combined.  Stir in milk, adding more one tablespoon at a time if your batter does not look wet enough.  Fold in chocolate chips.
5. Spray a loaf pan with non-stick spray and pour in batter.  Sprinkle chocolate chips on top.  Bake for 50 minutes, or until knife inserted comes out clean.

If you aren't a fan of dark chocolate then there is something wrong with you feel free to use semisweet chocolate chips.  We are just a dark chocolate family.  Seriously.  Ryann and Chris like the 80% dark stuff.  Blech.  I don't go that dark.

I didn't really taste the peanut butter much in this, and I think I would like to try maybe a chocolate banana bread with a peanut butter swirl...  Sounds good, right?

Enjoy!