One afternoon I was reading through a book and while I turning each page, my mind was thinking of what I could do with spotty yellow bananas. I made a lot of banana breads over the course of this seven week lockdown. And frankly, I have tried so many recipes that I wanted to push the boat and try something different.

When I was reading on a book about New York, it occurred to me that most recipes were part healthy. So this recipe does use part ‘Buckwheat flour’ but if you cannot find this flour in your supermarket, you can replace the flour with plain flour, aka all purpose flour (for the American friends).



Now this chocolate banana bread is thick and moist, that does help when there is a combination of bananas, yoghurt and eggs in there. The cinnamon gives a nice depth of flavour and the chocolate, well you can have more or less, depending on how much you love chocolate. 


This recipe calls for four medium bananas, spotty brown is preferably. Bananas at this stage are incredibly sweet and moist, which is perfect for making banana bread. Just leave the bananas in a dark place for a few days and they will eventually go brown and then thats your cue to make something with them. Three of those bananas will be in the mixture and one, when sliced in half would be used on the top of the mixture before baking. This is totally optional and I just like the way it is presented on top of the banana bread as it shows what type of bake it is! 


Scroll down for the full recipe.

NEW YORK CHOCOLATE CHIP BANANA BREAD

Prep Time: 20 min, plus cooling
Cook Time: 55 min
Total Time: 50 minutes
Yield: 1 loaf

Ingredients

Dry Ingredients
165g plain flour
50g buckwheat flour (if you don't have buckwheat flour, substitute to 50g plain flour instead)
1 1/5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon

Wet Ingredients
60g light brown sugar
70ml vegetable oil
2 large eggs
175g yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
165g bananas, mashed (approx. 3 medium bananas)

100g dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces
1 medium banana, sliced in half

Glaze
1 heap tbsp icing sugar
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp hot water


Method
Preheat the oven to 180 C degrees. Butter and flour a loaf pan.
Combine the dry ingredients and beat together the wet ingredients. Stir the mashed banana into the wet mixture and the chocolate into the dry mixture.
Combine the two mixtures without overworking the batter.
Pour the batter into the loaf tin and place the sliced banana on top and gently press into the batter.
Bake for 45 minutes. Cover with foil and bake for a further 10 minutes. 
Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then turn out on a wire rack to fully cool.
For the glaze, mix together the ingredients and drizzle over the cooled banana loaf.