I know what you're thinking - she already has a banana bread recipe - and you're right, I do. But a friend kindly let me know about a brown sugar banana bread she loved, so I got the recipe and tweaked it a bit.
Brown sugar is basically sugar with some molasses in it. I used light brown sugar in my recipe. It makes things like cookies be chewier and all that sweet rich flavor as well. I often will only use brown sugar in a small batch chocolate chip cookie recipe so that the cookies are soft and chewy.
The bananas I used today were sitting in our fruit basket for over a week. They were almost completely brown. You want to use bananas that are definitely ripe, but haven't turned to banana juice inside the peel - those you can compost or throw out.
And of course I used semi-sweet chocolate chips... because chocolate makes everything better.
Here are the ingredients I used:
- 2 cups of all purpose flour
- 1 tsp of baking soda
- a pinch of salt
- 1/2 cup of butter, softened
- 3/4 cups of light brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 3 very ripe bananas
- 2 tsps vanilla extract
- 1/2 bag (about 1 1/2 cups) of semi-sweet chocolate chips
Here's what you gotta do:
1. Set your oven to 350 F. Spray a bread loaf pan (I used a 9"x5" pan) with PAM for Baking or similar.
2. Mix the butter and the brown sugar thoroughly. Then add in the bananas and vanilla. Throw in the pinch of salt too. Mix well. The mixture may appear lumpy and that's ok. Add in the eggs and mix well again. It should start getting a bit smoother. Then add in the soda & flour. Let it mix until everything is well-combined, but don't walk away while it's mixing or else you'll over mix.
3. Add in this scrumptious chocolate chips. Make sure you taste test a couple before you add them in for quality control. ;)
4. Pour that batter into your prepped pan and bake at 350 F for about an hour (give or take a few minutes). I personally, like when the edges are a little overdone on banana bread, so I did a full hour.
5. Let cool in the pan for a few minutes before flipping out onto a cooling rack.
6. Slice off a giant hunk and grab something to drink, go sit down, and enjoy!
Wrap this well in plastic wrap or an air-tight container. It should last a few days (though ours will probably be gone by tomorrow morning).
