TWD: Black & White Banana Loaf

I have this love/hate type of relationship with bananas. I go through phases where I love bananas. And then the love phase is immediately followed by a phase where I just don’t like them at all. And lately… it seems like the hate phase has been in full swing. Basically, the only way a banana sounds really good to me right now… is if it’s sliced into a bowl a cereal. I love bananas with my cereal. Mmmm.

So, when I saw that Ashlee of A Year in the kitchen chose Black and White Banana Loaf for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, I was less than thrilled. And then I read the recipe and saw that it had chocolate in it. Chocolate and Bananas, you say??? Now, that’s a recipe I can get behind.

This recipe is a banana bread with chocolate banana bread swirled through it. It calls for two things that I NEVER have in my kitchen… dark rum and nutmeg. Thanks to our knowing the recipes further in advance, I was able to actually borrow some dark rum from my parents booze stash awhile back and the nutmeg… well… it will continue to not step foot in my kitchen. Yuck. I hate nutmeg. My bread is sans nutmeg.

The recipe came together very quickly. Although Dorie kept saying in the recipe that the batter would be lumpy. But, mine was never lumpy. I’ll tell you one thing though, I felt like there were a lot of bowls. I mean, I know a lot of recipes use a lot of bowls, but this one I actually noticed… Jeez… this is a lot of bowls on the counter...
(and in the sink).

When it came to the swirling part… well, my bread batter was as thin as pancake batter. So, it basically just kind of all melded together, except there was a little middle spot that stayed purely chocolatey. The rest of the bread looked like muddled crap.

I halved the recipe and came out with one mini loaf and 3 muffins.

The results? Ehhhh… I liked the crispy/chewy edges and I liked the chocolate part of the batter. But, I wasn’t super thrilled with the rest of the bread. The white/banana part of the bread was very tough. I must have mixed it too much, but the chocolate part was tender, moist and fluffy.

If you’re a huge banana fan, then you’d probably like this recipe. The only way I’d make it again, is to make it all chocolate (because that marbling technique is just too fussy for me), and to make it MORE chocolate-y.

Be sure to get the recipe at Ashlee’s above linked blog and check out the other Dorie Guys and Gals at the link above.