chocolate banana bread

prep: 10 MINUTES | bake: 55 TO 65 MINUTES | total: 1 HOUR 15 MINUTES, PLUS COOLING makes 1 LOAF (ABOUT 12 SERVINGS)

If your kids are anything like mine, it sometimes seems like you’re buying enough bananas for an entire house of monkeys—and none of them lasts long enough to turn brown. Well, after weeks of testing—mainly because I kept running out of bananas!—I came up with a banana bread so rich, so dense, and so chocolate-stuffed that we now buy extra bananas just so we can wait for them to get to that perfect banana bread–making over-ripeness.

It is completely acceptable to eat a slice of this for breakfast, at 3 p.m. for a chocolaty pick-me-up, or after dinner for dessert. Or even topped with ice cream at midnight. I won’t judge!

Nonstick cooking spray

1 cup all-purpose flour

½ cup Dutch-process or unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon sea salt

3 large brown bananas, mashed (about 1½ cups)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

¼ cup canola, vegetable, or melted coconut oil

¾ cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

1 Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9 × 5-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.

2 In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and sea salt.

3 In a large bowl, stir together the mashed bananas and melted butter. Add the oil, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla and stir until smooth.

4 Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just incorporated; don’t overmix. Gently fold in ¾ cup of the chocolate chips.

5 Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup chocolate chips over the top of the batter. Bake for 55 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out mostly clean. You may see melted chocolate on your toothpick from the chocolate chips. Don’t let it fool you into overbaking the bread! Test the loaf in a few spots—you just don’t want a lot of gooey batter.

6 Let the bread cool in the pan set on a wire cooling rack for 15 minutes. Run a knife around the edges of the bread and carefully remove it from the pan. Let the bread cool on the wire cooling rack until slightly warm. Slice and serve.

7 Store leftover bread wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 4 days. Or, if you’d like to freeze the bread, let the loaf cool completely, wrap it in plastic wrap and aluminum foil, and store it in the freezer for up to 1 month. Defrost before slicing.