Monkey Business

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So there were two sad looking over ripe nanners this morning and what do you with those......make banana bread of course. Before I get into the details of the bread and recipe I want to share with you a little insight into my daily life and typical issues when it comes to me and baking. I never have the exact ingredients....ever! I always stock up and have the basics but it always fails, always. When I need buttermilk, none. Not even milk and a lemon. When I need whole milk, I only have non fat. When I need eggs...well let me explain about my eggs today.

 As I was mashing my bananas I was like wait a second. Before I get too ahead of myself I should know something must be missing. It's just a given. So I go into the fridge and yep. All the eggs were gone. No biggie I thought. I will just take a quick walk to the Wawa and pick up some way overpriced eggs. Well, of course I get there and NO EGGS. Which is something that I have never seen before. I was kind of bummed so I decided to ask an employee just in case they didn't finish stocking them back up and what do you know I was in luck! YAY! So the ever so friendly Wawa employee (sarcasm) came out of the back with a stack of egg cartons. YAY again! So as long as I make it back with out dropping them I will be thrilled. It was such a lovely morning for a walk and it will be an even better day for Banana Bread. 

Ok, on to the deliciousness of this creation. I first started with your normal go to banana bread recipe. However I had some leftover mini chocolate chips and wanted to mix them into the bunch. I also added way too much cinnamon as my personal preference. And in an attempt to want to amp this up I made a brown sugar streusel topping. I over mixed it a bit and the butter and everything got a little too incorporated but I thought it might just melt better into the bread and give it a wonderful buttery sugary taste rather than an exact streusel crumb. And I was right! I actually prefer it melted into the bread this way with a crisp brown sugar crust than my original idea of the crumbly streusel. However, if you follow the directions properly unlike myself, you will have that but I'm telling you the messed up version is AMAZING!!!

Well here are the goods: 

Ingredients:

2 C flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon (or a whole bunch in my case)

1/4 tsp nutmeg

2 eggs, beaten

1 C sugar

2 bananas, mashed

1/2 C oil

3/4 cup mini semi-sweet morsels

Streusel Topping (recipe follows)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease bottom and sides of one 9X5 inch loaf pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.  

Mix well and set aside.

In another bowl, combine sugar, eggs, bananas and oil.  

Add banana mixture to the flour mixture and mix until lumpy.

Fold in chocolate.

Pour batter into pan and sprinkle with Streusel Topping.

You can also sprinkle a few chocolate chips right on top as well. 

Bake for about 60 minutes or until toothpick, inserted in center of loaf, comes out clean.

Streusel Topping

Ingredients:

3 T flour

1/4 C brown sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 T butter

Directions:

Combine first 3 ingredients in a medium size bowl.

Cut butter into mixture using a fork.

Mix until crumbly.