Recipe Post: Nutella + Bananas = AMAZING

I've been doing a lot more cooking from scratch recently as things have been getting slightly more back to normal after the move, and I thought I would post this amazing one I came across:

Nutella Banana Bread

I found this recipe on this awesome website called Six Sister's Stuff - I linked to the main recipe list.  The website was actually sent to me by my own sister, and I went there on account of their Freezer Meal Ideas (you spend a couple hours preparing everything then putting the meals in freezer bags, and when you want to cook one, you just pop it in the crock pot. Awesome.) And I have to say, I have actually cooked two of the pre-prepared meals so far and they were awesome (I wonder how many more times I can use the word awesome in this paragraph.) In case you are interested I made the Honey Lime Chicken Enchiladas and the Chicken Broccoli Alfredo with Easy Parmesan Knots. Yes, you guessed it - awesome.

Back to Nutella Banana Bread. It is definitely a sweet dessert bread, but you can pretend that it is super healthy because it is made of bananas and because Nutella (with toast) is a staple of a French breakfast (so says my 9th grade French teacher. . . who also forced us to sing the French song Alouette with her in class. Which was rather difficult because she was tone deaf, and she would get mad at us and make us start over if we didn't sing it "in tune" along with her. True story.) 

P.S. I am aware that the above ad is not in French. At least I got that much from French class.

Though people around the world eat their Nutella on toast, I prefer a healthier alternative by reducing the carbs and eliminating the toast all together and just eating the Nutella out of the jar with a spoon. I know my body thanks me for being so health-conscious. (Actually, I think there's a class action lawsuit against Nutella for making claims of it being healthy - it can't be any worse than Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal - its downfall comes from it looking a little too much like chocolate frosting.)

Ok, enough jibber jabber. Here's the recipe (in case you have actually made it this far without just simply clicking on the "Nutella Banana Bread" link at the very beginning of the post.) I did modify the recipe a tad (including the cook time - I prefer my bread to be cooked) and I eliminated a few extra steps I was too lazy to do (why add eggs separately? It still tastes good when I dumped both in at the same time).

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
3 ripe bananas, smushed
1/3 cup skim milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 heaping cup Nutella 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 8×4-inch loaf pan with nonstick spray.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, baking soda & salt.
3. In a separate large bowl, beat sugar and butter with an electric mixer at medium speed until blended. Add eggs and beat well. Add banana, milk and vanilla. Beat until blended.
4. Add flour mixture, beat at low speed just until flour is incorporated (don’t over mix).
5. Spoon Nutella into a small dish and soften in the microwave for about 15 seconds. Add 1 cup of the banana bread batter to the Nutella and stir until blended well. Spoon Nutella batter alternately with plain banana bread batter into the prepared pan. Swirl batters together with a knife.
5. Bake 60 - 70 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool for at least 15 minutes in the pan, and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Voila!! Chocolatey-bananaey goodness! Bon appetite!