Marbled-Chocolate Banana Bread

So I was going to make chocolate chip banana bread with the bunch of brown bananas sitting on my counter, but then Cooking Light posted a link to their best banana bread recipes on Facebook. And they had me at "marbled chocolate."

It's the same basic recipe as the chocolate chip bread, but instead of just throwing the chocolate chips in the batter, you melt them down, mix them with some batter, and then swirl the resulting chocolatey goodness into your bread. I made a few substitutions to the original recipe: I used white whole wheat flour in place of all purpose (so it's, um, healthy?), 2 eggs in place of the egg substitute, and vanilla yogurt in place of the regular.

The note on the Cooking Light recipe says to toast the bread, and smear it with peanut butter. Yes. Do this.

Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread
adapted from Cooking Light

Ingredients:
2 cups white whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (about 3 bananas)
2 eggs
1/3 cup vanilla low-fat yogurt
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Cooking spray

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, stirring with a whisk.

Place sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 1 minute). Add banana, eggs, and yogurt; beat until blended. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed just until moist.

Place chocolate chips in a medium microwave-safe bowl, and microwave at HIGH 1 minute or until almost melted, stirring until smooth. Cool slightly. Add 1 cup batter to chocolate, stirring until well combined. Spoon chocolate batter alternately with plain batter into an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Swirl batters together using a knife. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

Yield: 1 loaf


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