TWD: Cocoa-Nana Bread; or, Why This Isn't Really A Food Blog

I love to cook, but I'm not really a foodie.

I've come to realize that I spend about as much space complaining about food here as I do saying nice things about it.  I never thought of myself as a picky eater.  Most stuff, if I went to your house and it's what you were serving, I would eat without complaint.  (Unless it was, you know, banana pudding.  I'd shoot you Eyedaggers of Death for trying to feed me banana pudding.  And talk about you bad later.)

That said, there are some things that I simply CANNOT co-sign.  Chocolate things for breakfast are one of them.  Chocolate before noon may only come in one of the following three forms:

1) Reese's Puffs cereal (always welcome)
2) Milk-based beverages (chocolate milk/soymilk, cocoa, hot chocolate, chocolate chai tea are acceptable here; must be in the mood and paired with appropriate non-sugary food item)
3) Nutella (limited usage: lightly spread on toast or crepes)

Chocolate does not belong in pancakes or waffles and it does not belong in breakfast bread!  Chocolate muffins?  C'mon, son!  I mean, if you want a cupcake, have a cupcake!  Cupcakes have frosting!

And I speak as a person who would cheerfully eat breakfast three times a day.  Heck, I had breakfast at 2 today.  

So it was with trepidation and a wary eye that I mixed up this week's TWD assignment, the chocolate-banana concoction called Cocoa-Nana Bread.  I had about everything on hand.  It's quickbread;  not much to say about the process.  The whole point of quickbread is to be easy and foolproof.  I do actually like bananas and chocolate together, so I was fine with the combo.

I love cinnamon with bananas AND I like cinnamon with chocolate, so why not add some here?

I had a lot of bananas, but they were kinda small, so I used 3 instead of two.

'nanners!

post-'nanner

post-cocoa

Peeping Dorie's tendency to be a little happier with the chocolate than I might like, I nixed the chocolate chips in favor of walnuts, which I like better. 

As seems to be the usual case for me, baking took longer than anticipated.  Maybe I need to check the temp on my oven.  My second bake took about 60 minutes before I was satisfied. 

pre bake.  It was a LOT of batter.

bake 1:  whew, no overflow.

bake 2; a bread only a mother could love

Several commenters said it was more like pound cake than bread.  I'm not so certain of that.  The taste is definitely very much like chocolate pound cake--it's that same sort of relentless O HAI I'M CHOCOLATE SUGARINESS flavor you can get from pound cake, but the texture is definitely more like banana bread.  Pound cake is dense, but it has a tight crumb;  this is dense but fluffier somehow. 

I'm not sure what I think of it.  It's tasty.  I like the cinnamon and walnut additions.  I think I am ultimately unable to get over my fundamental disagreement with chocolate breakfast bread, though I have mostly been eating it in the afternoons.  Or maybe it's that I still am eating the almost-candy bars from last week and I just liked them so very much that this is paling in comparison.  I'm just not very interested in it.  Dah well.  I bet the leftovers would be good crumbled up in some whipped cream.

Thanks go out to Steph at Obsessed with Baking for choosing this one.  More chocolate next week, but not for morning consumption, so it's ok.  Next week's is the first recipe we've done that I've made before!  And to think I've had this book for years now.