chocolate chip ba-nay-nay (banana) bread.

Whoaaaa it's been a while! I've been baking wildly strangely, however forgetting to take pictures of my creations, thus there are no recent updates. I have an exam tomorrow on cardiovascular problems and I figured, screw that... I'm going to bake banana bread to procrastinate and it's going to be awesome.

This banana bread was made healthy due to a few tweaks to the recipe I use. I use the recipe of the famous Flour Bakery right here in Boston. I'm so inspired by the owner of it, Joanne Chang. She went to Harvard, studied management, was the head of a management firm, threw it all away and opened up her own bakery. I want to BE her. She was known around campus for being the "chocolate chip cookie girl." We are two peas in a pod, I tell ya. To all my Boston friends: GO to Flour and get a sticky bun, you life will be forever changed.

Also, this bread has consistently won the hearts of my co-workers and friends. This past summer I think I made over 15+ loaves due to all of the requests for it. Total crowd pleaser.

P.S. I realize this picture is uuuuugly. It's hard to take a solid picture with the terrible lighting at night in my apartment complex with a crappy digital camera.

INGREDIENTS--

• 1 & 2/3 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar (you can use Splenda to make it even healthier)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 3 & 1/2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 2 tablespoons plain greek yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2/3 chocolate chips (in her recipe she uses toasted walnuts which I HIGHLY recommend - there's just something so great about them being toasted)

DIRECTIONS--

Set oven to 350 degrees F. Spray loaf pan with cooking spray, heavily.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Beat sugar and eggs with a whisk until light and fluffy, about 10 minutes. Mix in applesauce. Add mashed bananas, greek yogurt, and vanilla. Fold in dry ingredients and chocolate chips. Pour into a lined loaf pan and bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour.

I'll leave you with some music too, music that I baked this to actually. I was told to take a listen to Ryan Gosling's band called Dead Man's Bones. It's a sort of creepy, dark, halloween-esque band where all of the songs are about ghosts or the dead.