One Bowl Double Chocolate Banana Bread

June 7, 2018 By justalittlebitofbacon 30 Comments

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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

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

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.

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5 from 7 votes