When life hands you brown nanas...

make banana bread. There aren't many occasions where bananas turn brown in my house, but when the do I certainly put a post-it on them declaring them reserved for banana bread and not the garbage. Surprising, or not, I am also a lover of breakfast foods. Bready, grainy breakfast foods specifically. Give me cereal, oatmeal, granola, quick breads any time of the day and I will be content. Many nights I come home from a long day at work craving a bowl of warm oatmeal with brown sugar. The other day I walked downstairs for breakfast and smelled bananas, which could only mean there were banana bread bananas in the kitchen. I quickly post-ited them from doom of the garbage and went to work, dreaming of a banana bread recipe to make at night. I decided on a variation of a Martha recipe I had made before only this time with whole wheat flour and chocolate chips (because everything is better with chocolate chips!). It turned out quite well even though I substituted the recipe so many times that I got a bit nervous (unlike the lack of fear I had when significantly changing the zucchini bread recipe from Apples for Jam...which was a DISASTER. Let's just say, baking is chemistry not art...you cannot change too much without messing with chemistry and turning loved ones off from zucchini bread for life).

For me, banana bread needs to be very moist, almost gooey and mushed-banana like in the center. It also cannot be too sweet, even with the chocolate chips (it's breakfast, not dessert!). I like the texture that the whole wheat flour gave to the bread and the 3/4 cup of chocolate chips were a nice little added treat. Have you seen simply breakfast? I love it! This photo-a-day of a cup of coffee and yummy breakfast treat is certainly furthering my love of early morning foods.

Whole-Wheat Chocolate Chip Nana Bread
adapted from Martha Stewart's The Martha Stewart Cookbook

1 stick of butter at room temperature
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of kosher salt
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
2 mashed bananas, equaling about a cup
1/2 cup of sour cream
1 teaspoon of vanilla
3/4 cup of chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9 X 5 loaf pan.
Mash the bananas in a small bowl with a fork.
In the mixer, cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy-about 2 minutes. Slowly add the eggs and mix well.
Mix flours, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Sift the dry ingredients into the butter mixture. Beat on low to mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture. Add the bananas, sour cream, and vanilla. Mix the batter well, but not too much.
In a small bowl, toss the chocolate chips with about 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour. Make sure the chocolate chips are well-covered with flour. This helps keep them from falling to the bottom on the bread and having a chocolately layer (which is good for some things, but not breakfast breads!)
Add the chocolate chips to the batter and fold in with a spoon. Add nuts if you so choose.
Pour into the bake pan and bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack.
Enjoy!

Have a wonderful last day of Spring!!