Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Every morning I check a bunch of blogs and recipe websites.  On days when I'm too busy to check in with all of my "friends" I really feel like I've missed out on something important.  One of the blogs I check is Spoon Fork Bacon.  I don't like everything that they post, and they don't post new recipes everyday, but there are some amazing gems on the blog.

There seems to be a tradition starting that every time I visit my dad and step-mom or they come to visit us in Atlanta we bring a baked good.  For Thanksgiving last year they brought us homemade carrot cake.  For the wedding my step-sister brought us the most amazing chocolate cake.  Even when we met in Gainesville last year for a homecoming football game we had homemade sugar cookies.  It's a perfect tradition.

After the amazing carrot cake, chocolate cake and sugar cookies, I was under pressure to deliver something just as good.  I put this pressure on myself, of course.  Nobody else knew I would compare my baked good to theirs, but I did.  I'm so glad it measured up!!

On Spoon Fork Bacon I found a Banana Bread that I had to try.  Thankfully we had some overly ripe bananas at home that were perfect.  (Did you see that it has chocolate in it - don't pass it up!)

Source: Spoon Fork Bacon.  I LOVE their photography!!!!

 As always, I made some minor adjustments to the recipe because, let's be honest, that's what I do.  I didn't have three bananas to use in the bread that were overly ripe, so I used the two I had on hand and a perfectly good banana.  I didn't make a difference at all - still super delicious.  I'm also not crazy about coconut so I left that out and added in some chopped pecans and walnuts that we had on hand.  Loved the texture that they added to the bread.

The recipe calls for a 9" pan but I only had an 8" pan so I filled the one I had about 3/4 of the way and then put the rest of the mix into a smaller loaf pan and watched it as it baked so I didn't burn it.

Four of us ate the loaf of bread for two mornings while we were in Florida visiting over the weekend.  I think that qualifies my bread as a success.