Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

For CNY, I tried to shake the winter blues by escaping to the tropical island of Hainan (Sanya). We were blessed with beautiful, sunny weather and I spent most of the 3.5 days there eating, sleeping, reading and swimming. Since we were staying at L's aunt's place (thanks!) which was in a remote part of Sanya with no easy access to food, I originally planned on making chocolate chip banana bread to have for breakfast.

The plan ended up being too ambitious as the night before my trip, I got home around 9pm and still had not even packed yet, never mind having the time to bake anything! Although I bought the bananas already, I figured they could wait until I got back. The recipe did say that overly ripe bananas were the best! =)

Anyway, this is the 2nd time that I've tried to make chocolate chip banana bread. The 1st time I made it, I'm not sure what happened but the banana bread ended up being drenched in butter even though I followed the recipe exactly. This time I used another recipe, but it still came out a little moist and dense so I'm at a loss of what to do. I think it's because I used brown sugar (which seems to increase the moisture) so maybe I'll try caster sugar next time.

And it's sorta annoying me that it's so difficult to buy semi-sweet chocolate chips in a regular grocery store! Not to mention that doing all this metric conversion is giving me a bit of a headache. Lucky I found this website which will easily make the conversion from cups to grams for common food items. Score!

P.S. I have figured out why my banana bread came out a bit weird… when I was combining the wet and dry ingredients, I may have mixed it too much. Apparently, overmixing the batter will yield tough, rubbery bread. Boo… so be warned... 

Ingredients:
2 cups (200g) plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup (113g) butter
3/4 cup (150g) brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
3 mashed over-ripe bananas (454g)
2 cups (365g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
1 tsp vanilla essence (optional)

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Beat in the eggs, vanilla essence and bananas till well blended.
3. Sift dry ingredients in a large bowl.
4. Lightly fold in the dry ingredients and chocolate chips into the wet ingredients.
5. Pour into a lined 9 x 5 loaf pan.
6. Make a cut in the middle lengthwise using a wet/greased knife.
7. Bake at 170C/350F for 60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.