Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. I receive a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase using my link. Click here for details.
My deep, dark double chocolate banana bread will bring you from dessert to breakfast! With no mixer required and intense chocolatey flavor, this is a banana bread you’ll want to make again and again.
Like many people, my favorite use for overripe bananas is banana bread. Sometimes I make banana bread with bourbon and pecans, other times I make into a proper banana cake with crumb topping, and every so often I heed my daughter’s pleas and make double chocolate banana bread. 🙂
This is serious banana bread which is seriously chocolatey. Seriously. I honestly don’t believe in making chocolate recipes unless they hit you over the head and loudly announce themselves as CHOCOLATE.
The way I chose to make this banana bread seriously chocolate has two parts:
First, I used bittersweet chocolate chips. You can use semisweet, but bittersweet has a deeper, darker chocolate flavor. More chocolate and less sugar means you can pack in the flavor without making the bread too sweet.
Second, I bloomed the cocoa powder.
What does it mean to bloom cocoa powder?
Blooming refers to the process of mixing your cocoa powder with a hot liquid. Water, milk, coffee, oil, or in this recipe – butter. If you have a liquid in your recipe with cocoa powder and you heat that liquid, you can bloom your cocoa even if the recipe doesn’t call for it.
When cocoa is mixed with a hot liquid (think about when you make hot cocoa), it dissolves and thickens, losing any graininess or lumps it may have had.
Why Bloom Cocoa Powder?
Because it releases the flavor of the cocoa into your recipe!
Simply stirring cocoa powder into the batter along with the dry ingredients is not going to give you the full chocolate power of the cocoa. It is only when cocoa meets a hot liquid that the flavor compounds are released. This likely because cocoa powder contains a certain amount of cocoa butter which then dissolves in the hot liquid; however, I haven’t found anything definitive about that.
What I do know is that I’ve made this double chocolate banana bread with and without blooming and it really does make a difference to my taste buds.
How to Make Double Chocolate Banana Bread
Ready to make an easy, intensely chocolatey banana bread which you can just about have ready to go before the oven is even done preheating?
First step is to make a parchment sling for your loaf pan since getting this chocolate topped bread out of the pan is not simple otherwise. Just a cut a piece of paper the length of the pan, spray down the pan with baking spray, and press the paper on in.
Next, you’re going to melt the butter and stir in the cocoa. Then mash the bananas and whisk together the butter/cocoa and bananas.
In that same bowl, add everything but the flour and chocolate chips – the brown sugar, sour cream, egg, vanilla, salt, and baking soda. Whisk it until smooth. Or smooth-ish since you do want those nice lumps of banana in the batter.
Now you fold in the flour and then half the chocolate chips and pour the batter into the pan. Spread it out evenly and top with the rest of the chocolate chips and bake until your tester comes out clean.
A little rest for the bread, and then use the sling to move the bread to a cooling rack. Wait as long as you can, or at least an hour, and then slice and eat!
Love chocolate as much as I do? Well, then I have some recipes for you! Here are my most chocolatey recipes:
More Dark Chocolate Desserts
- Intense Dark Chocolate Panna Cotta
- Soft and Chewy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Rich Pistachio and Chocolate Baklava
- Easy Flourless Chocolate Cake
- Best Ever Easy Chocolate Lava Cakes
- Dark Chocolate Mousse Pie
If you try my recipe for Double Chocolate Banana Bread, I would love to hear from you in the comments with your experience and rating! You can connect with me by subscribing to my emails (see the form in the sidebar or below the recipe card), liking my FACEBOOK page, or by following me on PINTEREST.
– Happy Baking, Annemarie
One Bowl Double Chocolate Banana Bread
My awesome, moist double chocolate banana bread full of dark chocolate, cocoa powder, bananas, and sour cream can be mixed up in one bowl. Easy and great for dessert or a snack anytime.
Prep Time15 minutes mins
Cook Time1 hour hr
Total Time1 hour hr 15 minutes mins
Course: Breakfast, Dessert
Cuisine: American
Keyword: banana bread, chocolate, quick bread
Servings: 12 slices
Calories: 300kcal
Author: Just a Little Bit of Bacon
Ingredients
- 8 tbsp (4 oz) unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup (1 1/2 oz) natural cocoa powder
- 3 large very ripe bananas, about 1 cup mashed
- 3/4 cup (5 1/2 oz) packed light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp table salt
- 1 cup (5 oz) all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups (9 oz) bittersweet chocolate chips, divided: 1 cup for the batter, 1/2 cup for the top
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F.
Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan and make a parchment sling by cutting a piece of parchment paper to the length of the pan and pressing it into the loaf pan so that the ends of the paper hang over the sides of the pan. Grease the parchment paper as well.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Once the butter is melted, stir in the cocoa to make a smooth paste.
Mash the bananas with a fork in the large bowl. Stir in the butter and cocoa paste until well combined.
Add the brown sugar, sour cream, egg, vanilla, salt and baking soda to the bowl and whisk to combine.
Add the flour to the bowl. Use a large silicone spatula to lightly fold over the batter until just combined. Then add 1 cup of the chocolate chips, and fold them in as well.
Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth it out. Then top the batter with the remaining 1/2 cup of chocolate chips, making sure to spread them out fairly evenly.
Bake the banana bread for 50 minutes at 350F. Then reduce the temperature to 325F and bake for 10 minutes more, until a toothpick comes out clean of batter (though you may see some melted chocolate).
Cool the bread in the pan for 15 minutes. Then run a knife along the two ends of pan with no parchment and use the sling to pull the bread out onto a cooling rack. Allow to cool for about an hour before attempting to slice so the bread has time to solidify.
Notes
- Slicing: The bread is full of chocolate, which does make neat slices a bit difficult. First, it's best to slice the bread within a few hours of baking so that the top chocolate chips are still soft and you can slice them. Second, the chocolate does tend to stick to the knife, so I like to have a cloth handy to wipe it off as needed. (Also, a little hot water on the knife to warm it up can be quite useful.)
- Blooming the cocoa: You will note that I added the cocoa to the hot butter before adding both to the bananas. Mixing cocoa with any hot liquid is called blooming and it allows the cocoa flavor to deepen and intensify.
- Parchment sling: Please use a sling for this recipe! It is very hard to get the bread out of the pan otherwise since there is a lot of soft and melty chocolate on top.
Related Posts:
- Classic Banana Bread with Bourbon and Pecans
- Easy Moist Banana Crumb Cake
- Chocolate Chip Banana Oat Muffins
- Triple Chocolate Banana Scones
- Banana Strawberry Coffee Cake
- Pear Quick Bread with Streusel Topping
