Tuesdays with Dorie: Cocoa-Nana Bread

I am so excited! Today marks my debut with Tuesdays with Dorie. TWD is a group of baking-cum-blogging enthusiasts that started with only 6 members couple years ago and has grown to over 450-strong (and counting) today. Group members are all fans of Dorie Greenspan and each week, we would bake a member-selected recipe from Dorie's award-winning book Baking: From My Home to Yours then blog about our bakes on Tuesdays. I joined the group early this year and with a couple of test-bakes under my belt, I'm now ready to get onboard and share this week's pick by Steph of Obsessed with Baking: the Cocoa-Nana Bread  from page 46 of the book.

The combination of chocolate and banana is no stranger to me. In fact, I've been exposed to this combo since a very young age, when I was just 3 1/2 years old! Yes, that's true. That very year, I started taking piano lessons and my first piano teacher Ms. Noreen Khoo would come to our house every Saturday morning to give me my 1-hour lesson. A cup of chocolate yoghurt on one hand, a spoon on the other, balancing the banana with the same hand, Ms. Noreen would sit and play alongside, as soon as her hand is free from the banana, that is. "Curl your fingers, yes, the pinky finger, Jenny. Let's do an octave on D-major, on the treble first.....remember your sharps......curl the fingers, curl, curl.....ok, stop. Now start with the left hand .....sit up straight, don't slouch.....lift your wrists.....curl your fingers......curl, curl, curl". That was my dreadful Saturday morning routine for a little over two years,  well, until they started putting me through the London School of Music certification program and switched me to different instructor for more intensive classes where the one-hour gradually turned to two, then three-full-hour lessons every Saturday, for 8 long years until the time I got my diploma! I've had 3 other instructors since Ms. Noreen but I'll never forget her and her choc-banana snack.

Just as how notes on the treble and bass clefs come together to form wonderful melodies in music, the chocolate and banana in Dorie's Cocoa-Nana Bread recipe work wonderfully well in combination. Since I was using a high cocoa content chocolate (70%), I actually added an extra banana to the recipe. Despite this addition, the cake is extremely chocolaty with the tiniest hint of banana. The cake turned out moist, albeit dense. I'm enjoying a warm piece of the bread as I'm typing this entry and I'd have to say, it's quite good!

Thank you Steph for this week's selection and a shout out to all TWD members. It's so wonderful to be able to bake along every week!

Cocoa-Nana Bread
Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 stick (8 Tbs) unsalted butter @ room temp.
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 ripe bananas (~ 1 cup), mashed (note: I had used 3 bananas)
3/ 4 cup buttermilk
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped (or  you can use 1/2 cup chocolate chips) (note: I used ~3.5 ounces for my bake)

Method:
Preheat over @ 350˚F. Butter a 9" x 5" loaf pan and place on insulated baking sheet (or 2 regular baking sheets stacked on top of the other)
1. Sift together the dry ingredients
2. Using electric or hand mixer, beat butter until softened.
3. Add in sugar and beat at medium speed for ~ 2 minutes.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, beating for ~ 1 minute after each addition
5. Reduce mixer speed to low and add in mashed bananas.
6. Still at low speed, mix in the dry ingredients in 3 batches
7. Add in the buttermilk and mix on low speed until it is incorporated.
8. Turn off the mixer. Fold in the chopped chocolate.
9. Scrap batter into the loaf pan.
10. Bake on center rack for ~ 30 minutes. Cover the bread with a foil tent to keep the top from getting too dark. Continue to bake for another 40-45 minutes or until a thin knife (or long bamboo pick) inserted into the center comes out clean. (Given my temperamental oven, I had baked mine at 330˚F for a total of 90 minutes)
Transfer to rack and allow to cool before unmolding.