Nutella Banana Bread

Ah, nutella day. It’s such an exciting time of the year!

[Note: pictures coming soon!]

Today’s nutella installment is more of a good idea than a new recipe. It’s a nice way to jazz up your favorite banana bread recipe.

My mom makes banana bread pretty often, because it’s a great way to use up old bananas. I used to have bananas on hand much more often (now I only have bananas in winter, to try to avoid a fruit fly infestation in the warmer months) and I, too, made banana bread practically every other week. But when you make something so often like that, you tend to get sick of it. Maybe that’s just me. But these days I usually give away all my banana bread. I’ll eat it fresh from the oven, but then I can’t wait to get rid of it!

Adding a swirl of nutella will help with that, I think. I already know that bananas and nutella are a wonderful combination. Here, the banana bread isn’t all that sweet, so once you get to the bite of nutella swirl, its super-sweetness is more satisfying than cloying.

Note: this isn’t my standard banana bread recipe, but I liked that it used 1/3 cup of yogurt- I have a giant container of nonfat plain greek yogurt that I’ve been struggling to use up, so I was very glad to have another use for it. You don’t have to use this recipe, you can use your own favorite. This one’s good, too.

Banana Bread with Nutella Swirl

adapted from The Family Kitchen

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened

1/2-3/4 cup sugar (I used 1/2, if you want it sweeter, use 3/4)

3 brown/spotty bananas, mashed

2 eggs

1t vanilla

1/3 cup plain yogurt (or sour cream or buttermilk)

1 cup AP flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1t baking soda

1/2t salt

1/3-1/2 cup nutella, slightly softened

Cream the butter and sugar until it’s sandy (it won't get too fluffy). Beat in the bananas, eggs, vanilla and yogurt.

Sift together the flours, soda and salt, and stir into the wet mixture.

Grease a loaf pan and fill with about half the batter. Spread the nutella over the batter, then add the remaining batter.

Bake at 350F for 1hr 10min.

It smells delicious, starting about 20 minutes into baking :)

Next time I make this, instead of spreading the nutella in a single layer just before baking, I’d rather fold it into the bowl of the batter to get more of a distribution. I wouldn’t mix so that it’s fully incorporated, but just so that it’s found more throughout the dough than in the single layer. Or perhaps there should be 3 layers of batter and 2 layers of nutella.