{TWD} Cocoa-Nana Loaf

This week's recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie baking group is Cocoa-Nana Bread, which is interesting for a couple of reasons: Dorie calls it a "bread," she places it in the "breakfast" section of her book, Baking: From My Home to Yours, and it contains a somewhat unlikely combination of ingredients: chocolate and banana. The chocolate-banana issue garnered nearly as much controversy in TWD's P&Q post this week as the chocolate-raisin one did last week!

While I wasn't sure I'd like the flavors of chocolate and banana together, I made the recipe almost exactly as written, hoping that I'd be wowed by the combination.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The Cocoa-Nana Bread was chosen this week by Steph of Obsessed With Baking, and you can find the recipe on her post.

- I made 2/3 recipe in two loaf pans; one small, one medium. The recipe was pretty simple to scale to that proportion. The only semi-tricky part was the egg, but with a digital scale that registers in grams, it really isn't that bad. To get 1 1/3 egg, I used one really large egg and added a bit of egg whites from the fridge to get 67 grams total (I usually assume a large egg weighs 50 grams without the shell).

- The only change I made to the recipe is to substitute 2 T of oil for butter in the hopes that it would ensure a nice moist crumb.

- I used a heaping 1/2 cup of mashed banana to equal 1 1/3 whole bananas. This is based on some research that I did when we baked the Black and White Banana Marble Loaf a while back (while there does not seem to be a consensus on the internet, I conclude that 2 bananas is just over 3/4 cup). I really wish that Dorie's recipe would have given a clue, because the size of fruit is quite variable.

- I baked each loaf just until the cake tester came out clean. I had lined the bottom of the pans with parchment, so the loaves released easily. Mine didn't seem to be as dense as those of some of my fellow bakers.

the verdict:

This loaf sliced well and had a nice, tight crumb. The chocolate chips I used were pretty big, so there were sizeable chunks of bittersweet chocolate in each small slice. Unfortunately, on first taste I found the bread a tiny bit dry, so I wish I'd used some more oil, or some yogurt, or more banana. My loaf had a mild chocolatey taste, and a slight, very subtle banana flavor. After an overnight rest in the fridge, the bread was fudgier and not as dry. I enjoyed the bread better cold than I had warm from the oven, but in the end I can't say that I was wowed by it. If I'm going to have chocolate it might as well be decadent, and if banana's on the menu, make it a plain old delicious banana bread!