chocolate cravings and banana bread

For some reason, I had close to none pregnancy cravings. It was lucky, I guess, but I was always curious about it. I mean, let's be honest, I do get cravings on a daily basis, so having a legitimate reason for once would be nice.

Anyway, one day back in Europe I woke up and decided: today is the day when I make banana bread. And that was the extent of it.
Normally I don't like bananas in anything but banana shakes - no banana pancakes, banoffee pie, and no banana bread. So I chucked it to a pregnancy craving, picked a random recipe from Pinterest and got to work. Of course, it turned out delicious and, of course, I didn't keep the recipe...

And here we are, a couple of months into motherhood, not pregnant in the slightest but the cravings continue. My latest thing is chocolate - shocking, I know. The thing is, I was never too much into chocolate cakes. Not that I don't like them, but I usually go for sth with whipped cream or butter frosting or caramel...
Once again, I opened Pinterest and picked "the best ever, oh so delicious, ah-mazing brownie" recipe. Well... it wasn't. It was too sweet, too oily and too flat with crystalized sugar on the top. It was nicely chewy though so we still ate half of it, but it wasn't satisfying chocolate experience at all. And that's when I started to think about that banana bread...
I went through like 10 different recipes trying to find the one I used before. In the end, I kind of mixed and matched and it turned out even better!

It is chocolate all the way! You can't taste bananas in it at all - great for me, cause, as I mentioned, I don't like bananas in cakes. (If you do, I would recommend adding some banana chunks to the batter.)
It's dense, not very sweet with a very deep, intense chocolate flavour from dark cocoa and coffee. I think I'll try it with a dash of chili next time!

Normally I would add chocolate chips and nuts (as mentioned in the recipe), but this time, I decided to utilize the not-so-ah-mazing brownie. I smashed it with a generous dose of dark rum and folded the crumbs into the batter - you can actually see it on the picture - the darker, denser dots. It gave the banana bread a kind of truffle quality and I absolutely loved it! Maybe not the point of screwing up another brownie just to put it into this bread, but if I ever have any stale cake left - I know what I'll be doing with it!

1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup flour
2/3 cup unsweeten cocoa powder

3 -4 ripe bananas ( I used 6 Goan micro bananas)
60g melted butter
1/2 (or less) brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup super strong coffee

2/3 cup chocolate chips (optional)
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1 banana sliced (optional)

Sift flour, salt, soda and cocoa powder and set aside
Mix bananas, butter, and sugar with a blender. Add egg and coffee and whisk together. Add dry ingredients and stir until combine. Add chocolate chips or nuts or banana chunks (or all of the above) and fold it into a mixture.

Bake 40-50 min in 180. I like it more brownie-like, a little fudgy, so I start checking it with a toothpick around 30-35 min. It should have moist crumbs sticking to it - not a liquid batter. But if you prefer well-done bread - wait until it comes out clean.