OK. You’re not going to believe this but I actually made one of the (literally) thousands of things I’ve pinned on Pinterest. And you know what? It was fantastic. Nothing at all like my yarn ball fail.
I was in charge of making desserts for the rehearsal dinner at my sister’s last weekend. My go-to chocolate chip filled brownies were an obvious choice. Every likes them and no one would complain. But we had a big group coming and I wanted to make something else.
I procrastinated and ran out of time/was too lazy for a grocery store run, so I decided to use my rapidly blackening bananas to make a recipe from Pass the Sushi: banana bread with Nutella swirls (check out her site for a printable version of the recipe and way better pictures. Or check out Lemon and Anchovies, the original source of the recipe).
I tweaked the recipe a bit because:
- I wanted Ellie to be able to eat it without worrying about her choking on nuts.
- My sister hates coconut.
- I am a chocolate fiend.
Here’s my version of the recipe:
Banana Bread with Nutella Swirls
Ingredients:
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tbs cocoa powder
- 3/4 cups sugar
- 1 tspn baking soda
- 1/2 tspn salt
- 3 ripe, dark brown bananas
- 1/4 cup yogurt
- 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
- 6 tbs unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 1 tspn vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup Nutella
- 1 cup chocolate chips
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a loaf pan with nonstick spray (or butter and dust with flour).
In a large bowl, combine flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, combine the mashed banana with the yogurt, eggs, butter, and vanilla. Gently add the wet mixture into the dry mixture and stir about 10 times. The batter will be thick and lumpy. Fold in the chocolate chips.
In a microwave safe bowl, heat the Nutella for about 15 seconds, stir, and microwave for another 15 to make the Nutella smooth. Set aside.
Pour half of the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Spoon half of the Nutella over the batter-filled pan and, using a butter knife, swirl the Nutella.
Pour in the remaining batter and repeat the Nutella swirl with the remaining Nutella.
Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, not including any hot melty Nutella goodness. Cool loaves completely. If using a metal pan, remove from pan after 20 minutes. If disposable pans, just allow the bread to cool in the pans.
Slice and serve.
When I tell you this bread is ridiculously moist and almost unbearably delicious, I am not kidding. In fact, it was so delicious it transformed my sister into some sort of weird goblin-like creature. It took me a little while to figure out who she looked like, but I think I got it pretty spot on.
Banana bread with Nutella swirls + my sister = Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
Am I right or am I right?
On a slightly unrelated note, would anyone be interested in reading more posts like this? Since I have an endless amount of pins I was considering making my attempts at them (both successes and failures) a running column. Let me know in the comments if this is something you’d be interested in seeing or if you could care less about my attempts at craftiness.
Gollum source