Chocolate Chip Walnut Banana Bread (video)

This chocolate chip walnut banana bread is my favorite banana bread recipe! It’s studded with chocolate chunks, crunchy nuts, and spiced with cinnamon. It’s so moist and delicious. I especially love it when it’s still warm and you bite through pockets of melted chocolate and crunchy nuts, it’s amazing!

Ingredients

• The best bananas to use are ripe bananas that have brown spots but are not completely brown and overripe (but these can also be used, it’s just not my preference). You can also use bananas that are not very ripe but you need to increase the sugar amount – add about 1/4 cup more sugar.
• You can omit the nuts.
• You can omit the chocolate, but the banana bread won’t be sweet enough, so you would need to adjust the sugar amount (add about 1/4 cup more sugar).
• I added light brown sugar instead of white, granulated sugar because I like its caramel flavor and it makes the banana bread even more moist.
• Spices: you can omit the cardamom and nutmeg and just use cinnamon, but I really like my banana bread seasoned with these spices.
• Banana slices on top of the bread: use them if you plan to eat your banana bread quickly. On the next day they become dark and unappetizing. You can also omit adding them.

Before you start

How to measure flour: if you use a kitchen scale to measure out all the ingredients, it all goes easy breezy! But if you’re using measuring cups, remember that 1 cup of flour can weigh 120-150g, depending on how you’re filling your cup. Don’t scoop the flour directly into the measuring cup, which can compact it! 1 cup of flour in my recipes weighs 125g. To correctly measure the flour, you need to:

1. Fluff the flour by stirring it in the bag/flour container with a spoon.
2. Spoon the flour and sprinkle it into your measuring cup.
3. Sweep off the excess flour with the back of a knife.

How to make this chocolate chip walnut banana bread step by step

This is a complete recipe. Scroll down for a printable recipe card. Notes regarding the ingredients are written above.

1. Prepare all the ingredients: Mash 4 medium bananas with a fork. Slice 1/2 banana.

2. Roughly chop pecans or walnuts (you should have 1/2 cup of chopped nuts (1.8oz/50g)) and 4 oz of milk chocolate (115g). In a small pot melt 1 stick of butter (4 oz/115g), take it off the head,t and let it cool.

3. In a small bowl, mix 2 1/4 cups of flour (280g/10oz), a pinch of salt, spices (1.5 ts cinnamon, 1/4 ts cardamom, a pinch of nutmeg), 2 ts of baking powder, and 1/2 ts of baking soda together. Set aside.

4. Place 2 large eggs and 3/4 cup of light brown sugar (5.3oz/150g) in a mixing bowl, whisk with a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment on medium-high speed for 5 minutes until the mixture is pale, light, and foamy.

This step is important, it will make the bread super light and fluffy. You can see the consistency of properly mixed eggs with sugar on the video.

5. Add the mashed bananas and melted and slightly cooled butter, mix until just combined.

6. Sieve the flour mixture into the batter.

7. Stir in with a spatula, until partially combined. Don’t stir it until completely combined.

8. Add the chopped chocolate and walnuts, fold in, taking care not to over mix the batter.

9. Pour the batter into a 9×5 inch (23×13 cm) or 10×4.5 inch (25.5×11.5cm) loaf pan (should be buttered and lined with parchment paper).

10. Lay the banana slices (the reserved ½ banana) on top. Bake in an oven preheated to 325 °F / 160 °C / Gas Mark 3, no fan for 55 minutes, or until a cake tester/bamboo skewer comes out clean. It may run longer or shorter in your oven.

Enjoy!

Storing and freezing tips

• Storage: in a tightly closed container or tightly wrapped in plastic foil for up to 3 days, it tastes great also on the next day! You can keep it at room temperature. If it’s very warm where you live, you may want to keep it in the fridge.
• Freezing: it freezes very well. Wrap in plastic foil and freeze. You can freeze a whole loaf or just slices. Defrost in the refrigerator then warm up in the oven at 325°F/160°C.

Why this recipe is amazing and well worth of your time

• this bread is very moist and you can easily eat in on its own, without spreading it with butter – the key to that is adding whole 4 bananas to the batter!
• thanks to such a large amount of bananas you can add less sugar and butter, which makes this bread just a little healthier than a regular pound cake
• thanks to mixing eggs with sugar it’s very light and fluffy instead of hard and dense, some recipes call for just mixing wet ingredients with dry ingredients (like making a muffins), but beating eggs and sugar really makes a difference to the texture of this bread!
• with each bite, you are tasting rich and moist banana cake, pockets of melted chocolate and crunchy nuts
• this cake is perfectly spiced – it doesn’t taste only of bananas, there’s cinnamon and just hints of cardamom and nutmeg, I hate underspiced banana bread! This bread won’t taste too spiced, though.

Another banana bread recipe from my blog: blackberry banana bread.

Did you make this recipe? RATE THE RECIPE or tell me in the COMMENTS how you liked it! You can also add a photo of your dish. It would make me very happy and will help other readers. Thank you!!