Recipe of the Week: Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

My sweetie loooooves chocolate chip banana bread, so since I had a couple of really ripe bananas laying on the kitchen counter, I decided to make a loaf for him this weekend:

Just look at that oooey-gooey warm chocolate and those big pieces of pecans...DELISH! If your mouth is watering, here's my recipe...

Ingredients:

• 2 very ripe bananas
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cup chocolate chips (milk chocolate is my sweetie's fave, but you can use semi-sweet if that's what you have on hand!)
• Extra sugar to sprinkle on top of warm loaf (optional)

Method:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease loaf pan. Combine bananas and eggs, mixing until blended. Add salt, soda, flour and sugar to banana mixture and beat on medium speed. Using a rubber spatula, fold in chopped pecans and chocolate chips. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for 1 hour, laying a piece of foil over the loaf after 30 minutes to keep from over-browning. Remove from oven and sprinkle additional sugar over the top of the warm loaf. (The sugar on top melts a little to give the bread a pretty sheen, but you can skip this step if you want.) Remove bread from loaf pan after 15 minutes and allow to cool before slicing. (Or...if you are like us and can't wait to dive into it after smelling it bake for the past hour - LOL! - you can slice it while it's warm so that the chocolate chips are all melty and gooey while you're eating it - YUMMMMMY!!) Store cooled slices in an air-tight container.

Have a FANTASTIC week!!