Yes Yes. Another Banana Bread recipe. I know the internet is full of them, trust me, I get it. But who can write a food blog and not share their most favourite family banana bread recipe? Not me, so here it is!
My Mother-in-law makes this banana bread and kindly allowed me to share the recipe with all of you. Just wait until you try it. Or until someone invents smell-a-vision (or smell-a-computer?) it’s that good, I just want to send you some. You cannot go wrong with bananas and chocolate, but this is literally the softest, most addictive banana bread I’ve ever had! Also it’s been a while since we had a cake recipe around here. Here are some other cake recipes  you might like in the meantime:
You have probably noticed there’s been a mini blog-hiatus around here (well at least no new recipe for 2 weeks, this is the first break I’ve taken since January). I wasn’t planning on the break, but I’m actually extremely glad I took one. See I LOVE this blog, it’s my outlet for sharing the things I’m passionate about. It’s a challenge for me to keep improving recipes, photography, writing, and it’s just a creative space that I am enjoying developing. However I also work full time, and for a good 6 months, our life became working Monday – Friday, with evenings being spent recipe planning/testing, blog post writing and scheduling and the weekends were pretty solid days of cooking, shooting and prepping for the following week. Down time was pretty much 0 and I began to not enjoy shooting the recipes so much. After a while you start to feel burnt out, and life is not so fun when you’re burnt out. By taking a couple of weeks off, I had a chance to take stock a bit, think a bit more about where this blog is going to go and now I’m back, I am actually more excited to keep moving forwards with it now, feeling refreshed.
I want to thank all of you who read my posts, make my recipes and send me lovely messages when you’ve made things that you have enjoyed, it makes me heart happy :). This space wouldn’t be what it is without all of you, you make it special, so thank you, I appreciate you being here and I hope you will continue to enjoy cooking and eating together!
The icing sugar on this banana bread is totally optional, but highly recommended. There isn’t a whole lot of sugar added in this recipe because the bananas are so sweet and the chocolate adds some sugar as well. A little dusting of icing sugar on the top gives a nice sweetness to the slice. Best served slightly warm with a cup of tea – enjoy!
Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram and tag anything you make from the blog with #LaurenCarisCooks. I love to see what you make!
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Chocolate Stuffed Banana Bread
Yields: 2 x 1lb Loaves
Ingredients
2 + 1/4 cups (280g) All Purpose Flour
3 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda
3 Mashed Ripe Bananas (use spotty brown bananas for best results – no green bananas here!)
2 Eggs
1 Cup + 1 Tablespoon (250ml) Natural Yoghurt
3/4 Cup + 1 Tablespoon (115g) Brown Sugar
1 Cup (115g) Butter, Melted
1 Cup (160g) Dark Chocolate Chips
Icing Sugar for dusting (optional)
Steps
1. Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius. Grease and line 2, 1lb loaf tins with baking paper.
2. Blend the bananas until they are completely liquid with no solid lumps. Melt the butter and leave to one side to cool slightly. After a couple of minutes, add the brown sugar and stir thoroughly. Add the eggs and bananas and yoghurt then beat together so that you have one well combined wet mixture.
4. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together so they are evenly distributed. Add to the wet mixture and beat with an electric whisk so that the batter is smooth with no lumps. Add the chocolate chips and stir so they are evenly distributed.
5. Fill each of the tins with half the mixture. The tins should be roughly half full. Bake for 50 mins to 1 hour until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in the tin for 15 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
