Tessa's Recipe Rundown
Taste: Banana bread heaven. The cocoa powder packs the perfect amount of chocolate flavor.
Texture: Ridiculously moist and tender and studded with gooey chocolate chips throughout.
Ease: SO easy to make.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe: A chocolate lover’s dream come true!
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This may just be my new all-time favorite banana recipe.
It’s insanely moist, deeply chocolaty, and easy enough for even a beginner to bake. If your chocolate banana bread has ever turned out bland, dry, or sunken, this recipe fixes that!
It was actually inspired by an East Village bakery crawl in NYC. The midnight banana bread loaf at Red Gate Bakery was so incredible I knew I had to make my own version of it when I got home.
This perfectly sweet treat is going to become your favorite breakfast/dessert/snack too!
Reader Love
This is such a great recipe and I will definitely be making it again. I took it to work to share with my coworkers and they’ve asked when I’ll be making this again.
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Sprinkle of Science
Baking Success Tips
- Use very ripe bananas for sweetness and moisture.
- Measure flour carefully to avoid dryness.
- Don’t overmix once the flour is added.
- Use a metal baking pan. Glass or ceramic will take longer and may result in sinking.
- Cook to an internal temperature of 200°F to ensure no gummy, underdone, or sunken centers.
Ingredient Notes
The below ingredients do the heavy lifting in this recipe, and were carefully chosen and tested to provide the best baking result.
- All-Purpose Flour – Measure correctly, the #1 reason banana bread turns out dense or dry is because of mis-measured flour.
- Cocoa powder – I used Dutch-processed for a smooth chocolate flavor and deep, luxurious color. Natural cocoa works, too. Read my cocoa powder guide here.
- Mashed banana – The star of the show! Be sure to use overripe bananas and mash well with a fork or potato masher.
- Sour cream or plain full fat yogurt – Either one will work to yield a moist banana bread with a beautiful rich crumb.
- Butter and Oil – Butter provides flavor, oil creates a moist texture that stays tender for days. Use any neutral oil that’s liquid at room temperature such as vegetable or avocado oil.
- Chocolate chips – For folding into the batter and drizzling on top as an optional finishing touch. I used semisweet chocolate chips, but dark or milk chocolate chips will work fine.
How to Make Chocolate Banana Bread
- Prepare the pan. Line a 9 by 5-inch metal loaf pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang. Spray with nonstick cooking spray. Don’t use a smaller size pan; otherwise your banana bread may overflow while baking!
- Combine the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, sugars, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- Combine the wet ingredients. In a medium bowl, stir together the bananas, sour cream or yogurt, eggs, butter, oil, and vanilla.
- Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Gently fold the wet mixture into the dry mixture until just barely combined.
- Fold in the chocolate chips. Be careful not to overmix. Spread batter into the prepared pan.
- Bake. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes, until slightly domed and the internal temperature registers at least 200°F with an instant read thermometer. Cool on a wire rack until completely cooled.
- Make the chocolate drizzle (optional). Melt the chocolate over a double boiler or microwave in 20-second bursts, stirring between bursts, until melted. Drizzle over the top of the cooled loaf. Let set before serving.
How to Ripen Bananas Quickly
To speed up ripening, place bananas in a paper bag and store in a warm area for a day or two. The peels create ethylene gas, which fills up the bag and helps them ripen faster.
To ripen bananas today, place whole unpeeled bananas on a baking sheet in a 300°F oven for about 30 to 40 minutes, or until the skins are darkened and the fruit is soft. This doesn’t yield the same effect as allowing the bananas to ripen naturally, but it’ll work in a pinch.
Storage & Make-Ahead
Wrap leftovers tightly and store at room temperature for up to 3 days. The banana flavor will intensify the longer it sits. For longer storage, freeze slices individually and thaw at room temperature.
FAQs
I have a recipe for that! Check out my Double Chocolate Banana Muffins Recipe!
Sure! You can add 1 cup of coarsely chopped nuts instead of the chocolate chips. You can alternatively add a mixture of milk, white and/or dark chocolate chips, mini chocolate chips, or even peanut butter chips, if you wish – the fun variations are endless!
Pro tip: if adding nuts, lightly toast your walnuts or pecans before adding them to the batter. Toasting the nuts adds so much depth of flavor!
This means it was underbaked. This is especially prone to happen if baking in a glass or ceramic pan, because those materials conduct heat less quickly than metal.
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Ingredients
For the bread:
- 1 cup (127 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup (43 grams) Dutch-process cocoa powder*
- 1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (100 grams) light brown sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 1/2 cups (340 grams) mashed banana (3 very overripe bananas)
- 1/2 cup (120 grams) sour cream or full fat plain yogurt, at room temperature
- 2 large eggs, lightly beaten, at room temperature
- 3 tablespoons (42 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until just warm
- 3 tablespoons (34 grams) neutral oil (vegetable, avocado, etc.)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup (170 grams) semisweet chocolate chips
For the chocolate drizzle (optional):
Instructions
Make the bread:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a 9 by 5-inch metal loaf pan*** with parchment paper, leaving an overhang. Spray with nonstick cooking spray.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, sugars, baking soda, and salt.
- In a medium bowl, stir together the bananas, sour cream or yogurt, eggs, butter, oil, and vanilla. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just barely combined. Gently fold in the chocolate chips, being very careful not to overmix. Spread batter into the prepared pan.
- Bake until slightly domed and the internal temperature registers at least 200°F with an instant read thermometer, about 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes. Cool in the pan on a cooling rack for 15 minutes before using the parchment overhang to remove the loaf from the pan to finish cooling completely. Bread will collapse slightly as it cools.
Make the chocolate drizzle (optional):
- Once the bread has cooled, place the chocolate chips in a double boiler set over simmering water or place in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 20-second bursts, stirring between bursts, until melted. Drizzle over the top of the cooled loaf (coating will be thick). Let set before serving, serve same day for best appearance.
- Wrap leftovers in plastic wrap or foil and store at room temperature for up to 3 days. The banana flavor will intensify the longer it sits, and the chocolate coating will harden as the loaf sits and may bloom (slightly discolor). If you prefer, microwave slices before serving to soften.
Notes
More Recipes You’ll Love:
- Double Chocolate Banana Muffins (the muffin version of this recipe!)
- Butter Pecan Banana Bread
- Classic Banana Bread Recipe
- Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
- Chocolate Zucchini Bread
Photos by Joanie Simon.
Oh my gosh this recipe was so delicious! Definitely pinned this recipe and will be making it again. It was more like a chocolate cake with a bonus of bananas.
This was oh sooo good. Very moist and easy to make. Great way to use up very ripe bananas!!!
Delicious and easy recipe to make! Thank you Tessa for sharing the recipe!
This recipe is rich and tasty! A fun way to elevate banana bread, while still being easy to follow and make. I enjoyed eating a brownie for breakfast and telling myself it was ok because it had bananas in it!
Super easy recipe! Tastes very moist & delicious.
This is the most delicious banana bread ever! So moist, even after a few days! I’m definitely making this again!
This is a fantastic recipe! I got many wonderful compliments on the bake. The chocolate level is pretty rich, which I enjoyed 🙂
Not my fave. Came out a bit rubbery
Hi Elisa! I’m sorry to hear that your banana bread didn’t turn out as it should. This banana bread should be moist, soft, and tender – and incredibly delicious! It’s truly one of my favorite recipes ever! Without having baked alongside you, it’s tricky to say exactly what went wrong here, but here are a few of the likely culprits:
– Do you have an instant-read thermometer, so you could temp the middle of the loaf to be sure it was baked through? Using a thermometer takes the guesswork out of the process, but be sure to poke a few places through the center of the loaf, to be sure it’s reached 200 to 205°F. Underbaked banana bread can have a gummy, rubbery texture.
– Rubbery banana bread can happen when batter is overmixed. Once the flour is added, be sure to only mix until just combined.
– What kind of pan did you use? As Tessa explains in the Tip Box (above the recipe), it’s super important to use the correct pan – both in size/volume, and material. We recommend a 9×5-inch light-colored metal pan. Anything too dark in color dry out the edges, whereas glass and ceramic pans can take much longer to bake, risking collapsing, or gummy or rubbery banana bread. The size is vital, too – more info on that in the Tip Box.
– How do you measure your ingredients? By volume (using cups), or by weight (using a digital kitchen scale)? When measuring by volume, it’s so easy to mis-measure ingredients (particularly flour and cocoa powder) and throw off the entire chemistry of a recipe – resulting in unpleasant textures or bland flavors. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time.
– How old are your leavening agents? If your baking soda/powder (soda in this case) are not fresh, they won’t do their jobs and your baked goods can have trouble rising, causing a weird texture. Baking powder/soda can also lose their effectiveness long before the expiration date on the packaging. Tessa talks about the science behind leavening agents, and how to test for leavener freshness, in this article here!
I hope something here helps, Elisa, and I hope you’ll give this banana bread another try – it really is incredible!! Happy baking 🙂
Came out well. Everyone loved it.
Wonderful and very easy to make. Thank you, Tessa, for including special instructions for those of us with smaller, ceramic loaf “pans.” I intend to purchase the right one someday, but for now, this is what I had, and your instructions helped me still achieve perfection. I used Black Cocoa powder, because I had that on hand. Super chocolately! I did not even need the glaze on top!
Making this loaf was easy and delicious. Eating this loaf was a weird experience because I kept being surprised by the banana (I think I expected a more pure chocolate flavor like in chocolate zucchini bread). It’s not my personal favorite – I think I’d prefer regular banana bread with chocolate chips. But it was a huge hit with colleagues and family, so I think overall it’s a winner!
Hi Monica! Glad to hear that you still enjoyed this loaf, even if it’s not your usual cup of tea! I hope you’ll give Tessa’s The Best Classic Banana Bread recipe a try – you can add chocolate chips (and/or nuts) and it sounds like it might be perfect for your preference! Happy baking 🙂
This banana bread is almost like a banana brownie. It is delicious and so moist. We didn’t do the chocolate drizzle but I think this will be made again so.