Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Happy Valentine's Day, all! On one of the recent snow days (there've been many... I lose track), I did some recipe experimenting and came up with this marvelous quick bread. It's chocolate-y and sweet, but not too sweet, so it won't outcompete the Valentine's chocolates. :)

My favorite part about this recipe is the chocolate chunk topping. That was a spur-of-the-moment decision. While scrounging up the ingredients for this quick bread, I saw a few Hershey bars sitting in the door of the fridge and thought, of course!! All in all, I think it was a good decision. I love the texture on the baked chocolate, a slightly blistered finish, just like the chocolate chunk cookies at Barnes & Noble Café. The trick is to add them after the loaf has started baking, so they don't sink down into the batter. Also, be sure to cover the loaves with an aluminum foil "tent" towards the end of the bake time, to avoid burning.

Ingredients

1/2 C. (1 stick) margarine

1 C. sugar

2 eggs

3 medium bananas, mashed

1/4 C. peanut butter

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 C. flour

Generous pinch salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/8 C. cocoa

1/4 C. plain yogurt

1/4 C. peanut butter

3-4 fun size Hershey bars, chopped into rough pieces

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease and flour two small loaf tins (3x7ish inches)

2. In a large bowl, cream together margarine, sugar and eggs. Stir in bananas, peanut butter, and vanilla. Sift in the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated. Lastly, fold in the yogurt.

3. Spoon batter into prepared tins. (To ensure the loaves are the same size, I add one scoop of batter in the first tin, then a scoop for the second tin. Continue spooning out batter in this alternating fashion, until you reach the end of the bowl.) Wiggle the tins back and forth so the batter levels out and "adheres" to the edges.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into center of a loaf comes out clean. At minute 15, before the batter on top has completely set, sprinkle on the Hershey's chocolate chunks. At minute 30, move the tins to the lower rack. At minute 45, tent the the bread with aluminum foil to prevent the top from burning.

5. Allow to cool for 15 minutes before removing bread from tins.

And enjoy!

'Til next time,

Eva