Chocolate Whole Grain Banana Bread

That is some long title, isn't it? I wanted to make a gift loaf and decided to try the whole grain banana bread recipe here from King Arthur Flour. It appears to me to be a standard banana bread recipe with whole wheat flour substituted for half of the all-purpose flour; they also suggest that you can substitute all of the flour if you wish. That is what I did. I also added two tablespoons of cocoa powder and used half butter, half oil rather than all oil. So here goes...

I first mixed together the wet stuff. I gave it a minute or two to combine thoroughly.

I then thoroughly mixed all the dry ingredients.

In went the dry stuff into the wet stuff. I tried to minimize mixing time to avoid developing too much gluten.

Whole wheat flour needs more time to absorb liquid than does white flour. I let the mixture sit for 45 minutes to give it a chance to absorb moisture. A couple of hours would have been ideal but I didn't want to stay up all night.

The batter eventually went into a Pam-ed loaf pan.

After an hour, out it came. I resisted the temptation to cut into my gift loaf but it sure looks tasty.

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