Gingerbread Banana Bread

Oh, the love sage between ginger and molasses continues...

After remembering how much I love gingerbread (and after making my first ever gingerbread cake recipe), I decided to bring ginger and molasses together for a banana bread dance.

Although I haven't had much practice with creating cake recipes, I have made many quick bread recipe alterations and felt less intimidated about whipping up a banana bread recipe with a few extra embellishments!

Butter was again left out of the story, but since chocolate is involved, I'm pretty sure no one will miss it!

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What I liked about this recipe was the depth of flavor--I enjoyed the subtle hint of gingerbread paired with the sweetness of the chocolate. This recipe definitely has room for tweaking (for example, I'd like it to be a little less dense), but it wasn't hard to eat. In fact, it may have actually been a little too easy to gobble up :)

My favorite part of making this bread was adding the heap of morsels of chocolate to the mixing bowl. And then, of course, sneaking a few of them into my mouth!

It may have gotten a little too brown in the oven (oops!), but the recipe is definitely a keeper. I will probably make a few tweaks for improvement, but I still thoughly enjoyed this fun twist to traditional banana bread!

Gingerbread Banana Bread:
Makes one loaf
{printable recipe}

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of applesauce
1/4 cup of white or brown sugar (I used brown)
1/4 cup of molasses
1 cup of mashed bananas
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp ginger
2 cups of flour (I used 1 cup of whole wheat and 1 cup of unbleached white flour)
1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bread pan.
2. Cream together applesauce, sugar, and molasses. Once well-blended, beat in eggs.
3. Add mashed bananas and vanilla.
4. In a separate bowl, sift/mix together flour, ginger, flour, cloves, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda.
5. Gradually add dry mixture to the creamed mixture. Once fully blended, mix in chocolate chips.
6. Pour into bread pan.
7. Bake for 45 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.
8. Let cool, cut, and enjoy!


{p.s. I'm sharing this recipe at the parties over at Life in Grace and Tatertots and Jello}