Anna Olson's Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

It's March Break and I had time for some baking. I wanted to do an easy recipe that I could have my daughter help me with. I went to my trusty Anna Olson cookbook (Back to Basics) and decided to use her recipe.

The bread turned out great - nice and moist, but it did brown quickly in my oven so you might want to wrap it with foil if you see that happening to you.  I used all all-purpose flour instead of half and half with whole wheat.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup packed light brown sugar

3 cups mashed ripe bananas (3-4 bananas)

1 egg, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F and grease 9x5" (2L) loaf pan.

2. Beat butter and brown sugar together until smooth. Stir in the bananas, then stir in the egg and vanilla. In a separate bowl, stir the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt to combine. Add this to the butter mixture and stir until evenly blended.  Add the chocolate chips, then scrape the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly.

3. Bake the loaf for  about an hour, until a tester inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Cool the loaf for 30 minutes in the pan, then turn out to cool completely. The loaf will keep, well wrapped and refrigerated, for up to 3 days.