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.
Lots of ingredients but still easy to make and taste….AMAZING!!
hi! i made 2 loaves of this recipe, first time i made it. while i followed the recipe and the only thing i changed was halved the batter and baked it in two smaller disposable pans. i even baked it 1hr and 10min to make sure it was cooked through. when it came out it read 205F. after cooling for a while i cut the loaf in half to check the middle of it. it was a little bit wet or gummy. i baked it again covered in foil for 20min at 325F. then after cooling, i checked it again and it was still the same. im a little bit confused as to why it came out that way when all the reviews on this recipe said theirs was good. im an experienced baker. do you have any inputs on why it came out like this?
Hi Vanessa! Hmm, if you checked the internal temperature of your loaf, it definitely shouldn’t be underdone in the middle. When testing with your digital thermometer, did you test a few different spots through the center of each loaf, to ensure it wasn’t just one bit registering the baked temp? It can be so easy to accidentally hit the bottom of the tin, or even a chocolate chip, and think that your bread is done before it really is – so checking at least a few spots can be helpful. Disposable pans can take a bit longer to fully bake than the metal pan Tessa recommends, just because they’re not able to conduct heat quite as efficiently, so this could be why your bread, even in their smaller pans, took longer to bake than expected. The only other thing I can think is that your oven may run a little cool (read more about that here) which could also factor in here. I hope something here helped, Vanessa, and I hope you still enjoyed your banana breads!
This bread was so lovely and decadent! I’ll absolutely be using brown bananas to make this over and over again!
this double chocolate banana bread is so decadent and delicious. it’s a keeper!
Found this recipe so easy and it came out beautifully. I’ve had banana bread, I’ve had chocolate cake… this is the first time I’ve combined the two and it is so good!!
Amazing!! Our go to recipe! So easy! And absolute crowd pleaser!
Just made this today and it’s so dang good! Perfect banana flavor to chocolate ratio!♥️
Loved this! So moist from the yogurt. I omitted the chocolate drizzle on top because I didn’t want it too sweet and this recipe was the perfect ratio of chocolate to banana. And the texture is spot on. New fav banana bread recipe.
Amazingly chocolatey and moist! Tessa’s banana bread is made on repeat at our house and this one shines as bright! To me it’s dessert and I plan to make it for my book club in a couple of weeks!
Delicious & moist banana bread that could be easily mistaken for CAKE!! Lovely and rich. Would definitively make again. No stand mixer required!
I made this into 4 mini loaves. I did not have any sour cream or full fat yogurt so subbed in Chobani non fat Greek. can’t say what the difference would have been as they turned out fabulous! Moist, and delicious. I started with 30 minutes, ended up 35 minutes in total baking time.
This is a great recipe and you don’t even need a mixer. But there are potential pitfalls. If you are a beginner read Tessa’s tips in the pink boxes! I’m at an elevation of 6,000 feet and had no problem. I followed the recipe exactly as written and weighted my ingredients. Because there are melted chips inside the loaf, as recommended I found it important to test several spots w a food thermometer to make sure I had a consistent temp of “done” (200-205).
Fantastic tips, Cindy! So glad you enjoyed this recipe 🙂