RECIPE: Pumpkin Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

One of the kitchen memories I cherish most with my mother is baking banana bread with her. My mother loved to bake and banana bread was practically a weekly staple. For my parents who didn’t like to waste food, it was the perfect way to use up those last brownish, slightly mushy bananas of the week into something new and delicious.

I often still make the same recipe I made with my mother from “Beard on Bread,” although I have branched out by trying several variations over the years, including a killer whole wheat zucchini banana bread which my daughter loves.

I am definitely one of those people who love pumpkin all autumn long, and so this pumpkin banana bread is for my kindred pumpkin loving spirits. It is moist, sweet, chewy, and perfect with that pumpkin spice latte or constant comment tea. Or, ya know, if you’re a kid, a glass of milk.

This quick bread is a delicious sweet treat for after fast, for the autumn, and for kicking off a sweet New Year.

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INGREDIENTS:

½ cup butter (1 stick)

1 ½ cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 ripe bananas, mashed well

¾ cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)

1 ¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp baking soda

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp ginger

¼ tsp nutmeg

Pinch ground clove

½ tsp salt

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips plus extra

Sanding sugar (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a large loaf pan and then coat inside with around Tbsp sugar, tapping out an excess (this is instead of flour).

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs one at a time and vanilla. Add mashed banana and pumpkin puree.

In a medium bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove and salt.

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients in 2-3 batches. Fold in chocolate chips using a spatula.

Pour batter into prepared loaf pan. Add a handful of additional chocolate chips on top and sanding sugar if desired.

Bake for 55-60 minutes, or until a toothpick insert in the middle comes out mostly clean. Allow to cool 10 minutes then gently remove from pan.

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Shannon Sarna

Shannon Sarna is Editor of The Nosher. Born to an Italian mother who loved to bake, a Jewish father who loved to experiment, and a food chemist grandfather, loving and experimenting with diverse foods is simply in her blood. Her writing and recipes have been featured in Tablet Magazine, JTA News, New Jersey Monthly Magazine, The Jewish Week, Joy of Kosher Magazine, Vinepair, Modern Loss and Buzzfeed. She graduated from Smith College in Northampton, MA with a degree in Comparative Government and Spanish Language and Literature and lives in South Orange, NJ with her husband, daughters and rescue dogs. To see what Shannon is cooking and eating, follow her on Twitter and Instagram.