banana bread – double chocolate – double awesome

Banana Bread loaded with chocolate, quick, easy to make and impossible to stop eating but that isn’t why I made it.

There’s nothing like a dose of tough love from my daughters to set me on the straight and narrow.

I’d spent our shopping time in Toronto searching for rennet. The stuff needed to make cheese, cheese. I thought it would be easy, in a city full of ethnic neighbourhoods, to find a shop that would carry everything necessary to make homemade cheese. Not so much… We walked for hours, in and out of little and big grocery stores, with no luck. Finally on Sunday, in the most unlikely store, I found it. Unfortunately, it was packaged as part of a cheese-making kit. I didn’t need anything else in the box except the rennet but after the miles we had covered hunting, I bought it.

On the way back to Kaitie’s apartment, she asked me what I was making the mozzarella for.

“My blog.”

Silence… I was waiting for an enthusiastic, “wow” instead, I got…

“Mom, you need to be relevant.” – Meg

“You have to write about what people want to eat not what you think is interesting to make.” – Kate

“Really Mom, how many people will actually make their own mozzarella?” – Meg

This is what it sounds like, when my daughters need me to hear their message. Sara had left by this time so the trio was a duo! They tag team. No opportunity for me to counter or interrupt.

I pouted. Not in an over-the-top ticked-off way but more of a mildly-devastated-but-I’ll- recover kind of way. The girls were having none of it.

“Mom, you just spent four days trying to find the most obscure ingredient on the planet and you had to fly two thousand miles to do it. Who else would do that?”

In my own defense, I flew two thousand miles to see my daughters. The fact that I, then, drug them all over Toronto on the ‘holy rennet quest’ is superfluous – right?

Despite my alibi and my irritation at having such astute children, they’re right. The recipes that excite me are not the complicated, long drawn out cooking odysseys. Those recipes get a quick once-over and get tossed into the internet junkyard. When I look back over the five hundred recipes hard to believe that I’ve shared, your favorites are all the classics and my spin on the classics. I get it.

To my point, Smitten Kitchen is one of my favorite bloggers. Not because she’s a brilliant writer, or takes gorgeous food shots or lives in New York City but because she shamelessly loves Banana Bread. I’m being facetious. Her love for banana bread is a metaphor for the honesty in her cooking approach. She likes what she likes and what she likes is what can come out of an ordinary home kitchen. Obviously, she’s not faced with ingredient deprivation like those of us living in eastern Canada or more specifically New Brunswick. Still, I gravitate to her blog because she turns ordinary into extraordinary with the addition of a little food magic. ‘Why didn’t I think of that’, is a recurring theme after reading her posts. Hmmm…

I’d still like to write about home-made mozzarella but I’ll wait until I can include a rennet mail-order link! How’s that for a compromise, girls?

Double Chocolate Banana Bread inspired by Smitten Kitchen
Preheat oven 350°F.

6 medium ripe bananas
1 cup butter, melted
½ cup agave syrup
2 extra large eggs
½ tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

THE STEPS:

• Butter a 4×12 inch loaf pan, or spray it with a non-stick baking spray.
• Mash bananas in the bottom of a large bowl.
• Whisk in melted butter
• Add agave syrup, eggs, and vanilla and whisk well
• Place baking soda, salt, flour and cocoa powder in a sifter and sift over wet ingredients.
• Fold dry into wet ingredients with a rubber spatula until just combined.
• Fold in chocolate chips.
• Pour batter into prepared loaf pan
• Bake 55 to 65 minutes, a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake should come out batter-free.
• Cool in pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then run a knife around the edge and invert it out onto a cooling rack.
• Serve warm or at room temperature.

THE LOVE: Make sure your bananas are REALLY ripe. They should be practically mush before you mash them!

print recipe

one year ago: spring asparagus with poached egg and snipped chive shoots

two years ago: fettuccine with spicy seafood sauce

three years ago: Brenda’s ceviche

Thanks for reading.