Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

 Prep Time : 15 Minutes | Cook Time : 75 Minutes | Total Time : 1 1/2 hours | Difficulty : Easy

I’ve been on the hunt for a good banana bread recipe for ages and have read or tried a ton of them. For me banana bread has to be simple and it shouldn’t have too much added sugar. It should be tender but still have substance. And it should taste great obviously. I think we’re there!

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Prepare your loaf pan by either brushing with butter and dusting with flour, or lining with baking paper. I desperately wanted to use the mini loaf tins that I bought a little while ago and found paper too fiddly but it will make for easy lift-out for a larger loaf.

Sift the flour, soda, salt and cinnamon together and set aside. Mash the bananas until smooth and runny either in a stand mixer or by hand – I found that a stick/immersion blender does an excellent job but it can add a lot of air to the purée. Make sure you have one cup of banana.

Beat together the banana and sour cream (or yoghurt – it just needs to be acidic and we don’t want to miss out on banana bread because there isn’t any sour cream in the house), followed by the sugar, egg, oil and vanilla. It should be fairly runny and maybe there are a few bits of sour cream or banana floating around. Gently fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the chocolate chips. If you don’t feel like chocolate chips you can leave them out or use pecans or walnuts instead – just replace them with an equal volume of whatever you fancy.

Tip the batter into one medium or three mini loaf pans making sure to get all those chocolate chips in. Roughly level the tops.

Pop the banana bread into the oven and bake for 60 to 75 minutes (as a single loaf) or 30 to 35 minutes (as three loaves). Rotate the pans halfway through and start checking for done-ness a bit early – you may find you need to cover the top of the bread with a piece of foil if it gets too dark on top. The banana bread is ready when a skewer or cake tester inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack for a while before cutting to let it firm up. I find I love the texture of warm banana bread but the flavour is better if you let it cool completely.

Banana bread is perfect on its own with a cup of tea or added to lunch boxes. It should also freeze well but I couldn’t test the fact – when I came home from work the next day it was gone!