Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped and toasted and cooled

1¾ cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup chocolate chips

3 large, very ripe bananas (mashed)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 eggs
½ cup butter melted and cooled a bit

Preheat oven to 350 and grease/spray loaf pan and place a wax paper liner in bottom of pan and greasespray again.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, cinnamon, walnuts and chocolate chips.(Make sure the walnuts are thoroughly cooled before adding them to the dry ingredients, as the heat would activate the baking powder too early).

Add the vanilla extract to the mashed bananas and then add the beaten egg and the cooled butter. (Be certain that the melted butter is cool or it will cook the eggs when incorporating together). Add this to dry ingredients and mix no more than ten seconds. The batter will be visibly lumpy. That's OK! It's extremely important not to over mix the batter, or the resulting bread will be too hard.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and immediately bake 350 oven for 50-60 minutes. Cool 5 minutes and release from pan to cool.