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The best banana bread recipes

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Caoimhe Keegan (caoimhekeegan1) - Profile | Pinterest

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Caoimhe Keegan | My love for bananas and everything related to them

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I always agree that chocolate chips impoves any baking idea

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It's not just nostalgia. Those bagged chips can lead to better-tasting desserts, Genevieve Ko explains.

Chocolate chips melted into the batter of this one-bowl flourless chocolate cake give it a rich taste and fudgy texture. Credit... Jenny Huang for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Susie Theodorou; Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.

It took two months for Claudia Martínez, the executive pastry chef at Miller Union in Atlanta, to perfect her salted chocolate-chip cookie recipe. For the morsels, she ended up using a high-end chocolate - Lactée Barry Equilibre from the French chocolate company Cacao Barry - and was happy with her results. But when she tried some cookies that her regulars had made for her as gifts, she thought they tasted "way better" than her own.

They were baked with Toll House chocolate chips.

"As pastry chefs, we're always trying to use the fanciest chocolates," said Ms. Martínez, 29. "Sometimes, people just want that flavor they can recognize." Including her. Toll House morsels were in her mother's cookies and in treats made by her childhood babysitter long before she attended culinary school.

Nostalgia is only one reason to love chocolate chips. Aside from their obvious convenience - no messy chopping - they hold their shape better in the oven when stirred into doughs and batters, and deliver more flavor in baked goods than some expensive bar chocolates. And it's all because they're relatively low in cocoa butter and high in cacao solids.

Donald Wressell, an executive chef of the Guittard Chocolate Company, said, "At face value, sure, the most expensive chocolate is the best," but he emphasized that how you plan to use the chocolate should determine what you use. "What is the right chocolate for what you're trying to do?"

If it's baking, the right choice is probably chocolate chips.

Chocolate chips hold their shape better than bars, adding structure and creating chunkier cookies. Credit... Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Christina Lane.

Chocolate varies widely, but most is a blend of sugar and cocoa mass, which is made up of ground cacao solids and cocoa butter, the fat from cacao beans. Fat carries flavor, so more cocoa butter means more of the cacao solids' flavor coats your tongue when you're eating chocolate on its own. Cocoa butter also helps temper the bitterness inherent in chocolate and smooths both the texture and taste. So if you take a bite of a pricey bar and then try a chocolate chip, the bar probably will taste better.

But a higher proportion of cocoa butter also makes chocolate more fluid when it's melted. That's ideal for coating confections - think shiny, snappy shells enrobing truffles and caramel - but it isn't necessary or even useful for baking, said Jacques Dahan, the president of the chocolate company Michel Cluizel USA. In fact, he said, "you want less cocoa butter for chocolate that you bake with."

That's in large part because cocoa butter is very expensive for chocolate manufacturers, and the extra cost, which is then passed onto consumers, isn't worth it for many baked goods. Cocoa butter adds fat, but you can't really taste it once it's baked with other ingredients. And most baked goods include added fat like dairy butter anyway, so the cocoa butter isn't necessary.

Since chocolate chips have less cocoa butter, they have more cacao solids instead. Some chocolate chips, such as those from Michel Cluizel, Guittard and Valrhona, keep the amount of cocoa butter low for all the benefits of a baking chocolate, but are higher-end options with fewer, if any, additives. In all baking morsels, the higher proportion of cacao solids yields a lot more flavor in baked goods because "solids are where the flavor's at," Mr. Wressell said. And you need stronger flavor when chocolate is blended with other ingredients, as it is in brownies. In a flourless chocolate cake, melted chips shine through the creaminess of butter and the richness of eggs. They also help bind the ingredients in the absence of flour for a fudgy yet tender texture.

When stirred into batter as whole morsels, chocolate chips give height to baked goods like this banana bread. Credit... David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

When chocolate chips are simply stirred whole into dough or batter, they showcase their most distinctive property: their ability to hold their perky shape in a hot oven. Because chips have more cacao solids and the solids themselves don't melt, the chips stay intact enough to give structure and height to chunky cookies and banana bread, like throw cushions in a pillow fort.

Since Nestlé began manufacturing the morsels in the 1940s - thanks to Ruth Wakefield's invention of the chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s - many companies have inundated the American market with options, especially over the last few decades. Among all the products, there is no one best chocolate chip, only your preferred choice for any given dessert. To find what you like, Mr. Wressell recommends not only tasting different chocolate chips, but also baking with them.

That's what Jacqueline Eng, the head baker and co-owner of Partybus Bakeshop in New York City, does. Because she thinks of herself as a bread baker first, she feels like she's experimenting when she works with sweets. "Approaching chocolate is intimidating because you can deep dive into sourcing beans from different countries," she said. "Instead of being intimidated, I decided to just make what I thought tasted good, just by trial and error."

After mixing different products into her cookies, Ms. Eng landed on using Callebaut 54-percent cacao callets. But, for a stretch of the pandemic, supply chain issues made it difficult for her to find them, so she substituted chocolate chips from the grocery store.

Even though she didn't prefer them, she heard positive reviews from new customers and personally understood why. She said, "You can't really hand me a cookie that I'm not going to like."

Recipe: Flourless Chocolate Cake

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Forget Chocolate Bars: Baking With Chips Is Often Better

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It's not just nostalgia. Those bagged chips can lead to better-tasting desserts, Genevieve Ko explains. It took two months for Claudia Martínez, the executive pastry chef at Miller Union in Atlanta, to perfect her salted chocolate-chip cookie recipe.

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My second favourite cafe with amazing macarrons, I love the play on name and the staff are ever so lovely

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Queen of Tarts café and patisserie in the heart of Dublin city

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One of my favourite cafe's for pasteries

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One of my favourite cafe's for pasteries

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Located in Dublin City Centre, it has the tastiest of macaroons, I recommend the raspberry one :)

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Ladurée Ireland - World Famous Macarons, Cakes, and Desserts

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Welcome to Ladurée Ireland. We deliver our world famous macarons throughout the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. We offer a fabulous selection of cakes, desserts, and personalised macarons to make every occasion and celebration one to remember. Our tea room is located in the heart of Dublin…

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The go-to recipes I use in relation to banana bread and banana pancakes

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Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

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Photo by Carolina Gelen

Author Notes

A classic French pastry, the invention of the éclair is credited to Marie-Antoine Carême, the same chef known for the croquembouche. Both desserts hinge on pâte à choux-fun fact, choux translates as "cabbage," which is what the dough looks like when it bakes up, sort of. In the case of éclairs, you pipe a strip of pâte à choux, bake it until puffy, fill with pastry cream (or crème pâtissiere in French), then glaze with icing. Let's be real: It's not an easy dessert. As Alice Medrich notes in her guide to éclairs, you have to worry about evenly piping the pâte à choux, whether it'll puff properly in the oven, and more. The good news: This recipe has all the same components of a chocolate éclair-pastry! custard! ganache!-with way less worry.

This idea popped into my head after coming across a recipe claiming to be an éclair cake-but the components were completely different. Graham crackers, vanilla pudding, and chocolate frosting. It had close to nothing to do with an éclair. And so this actual-éclair cake become my new life mission. The result has all the deliciousness of the pastry with less of the fuss. No more individual portions. Instead, you bake big squares of pâte à choux and fill them with pastry cream like a layer cake. Feels rebellious, but it works! And if the choux doesn't puff up in the oven, guess what? It'll get covered in pastry cream and melted chocolate, so who cares?

The pâte à choux portion of this recipe comes from the wonderful Erin McDowell, Food52's resident baking BFF-check out her full recipe here. - Carolina Gelen

Prep time 11 hours

Cook time 55 minutes

Serves 9

Ingredients

Pastry Cream:

Pâte à Choux:

Chocolate Ganache:

Directions

1. Make the pastry cream: Stir together the sugar, yolks, cornstarch, and salt in a heatproof bowl. Combine the milk, cream, and vanilla in a medium saucepan over medium heat and heat until hot. While whisking, slowly stream about half of the hot liquid in the yolk mixture. Pour this tempered yolk mixture into the pot with the rest of the milk mixture (you can pour through a fine-mesh sieve if you're worried about any cooked egg bits). Cook over low to medium-low heat for 4 to 8 minutes, stirring frequently, until bubbling and thickened like pudding. Turn off the heat, then mix in the butter. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a heatproof bowl, discarding any clumps caught in the sieve. Cover the pastry cream with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate until cold. (This step can be done up to 2 days in advance.)

2. Make the pâte à choux: In a medium saucepan, combine ½ cup (114 grams) of water, the milk, butter, and salt. Bring to boil over medium heat. Stir in all of the flour with a silicone spatula or wooden spoon. Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture becomes sticky paste and there's a visible film of starch on the bottom of the pan, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer the flour mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Whisk the eggs in a large liquid measuring cup. With the mixer running on medium speed, add the eggs in slow, steady stream and continue mixing until totally incorporated, about 4 minutes total. Dip the paddle into the batter and lift it up-the batter should form a V shape that eventually breaks away from the batter in the bowl. If the dough is too stiff or pulls away too quickly, add another egg to loosen the consistency.

3. Bake the pâte à choux: Heat the oven to 375°F. Get out an 8-inch square baking dish. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Using the baking dish as a guide, trace two squares with pencil on the parchment, then flip the parchment. Pipe or spread the choux evenly inside those two squares (about 320 grams of pâte à choux per square), leaving a ½-inch or so border for the pastry to expand in the oven and fill out the squares. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until puffed and golden brown. (Don't open the oven during the first 25 minutes, otherwise the choux will depuff.) Transfer the baked choux squares to a wire rack to cool completely.

4. Make the ganache: In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, bring the cream to a simmer. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate and salt. Wait a few minutes, then stir until the chocolate is silky smooth. Let cool until barely warm.

5. Assemble the éclair cake: If needed, use a pair of scissors to trim the border of the choux squares so they can fit inside the baking dish. Place one choux square at the bottom of the baking dish. Stir the pastry cream to smooth out, then evenly spread that on top. Place the second choux square on top. Spread the chocolate ganache on top. Tightly cover the pan and refrigerate for 10 to 24 hours before slicing and serving.

Carolina is a resident at Food52. She's also one of the hosts of Choose Your Own Recipe Adventure, our YouTube show where our Food52 readers pick the ingredients and techniques for a brand new recipe. Carolina recently immigrated to the U.S. from Transylvania, a place she spent most of her life. She continues to get inspired by the classic Romanian and Hungarian foods she was raised on, creating approachable, colorful, and fun recipes. For more cooking ideas and candid moments, check out her Instagram @carolinagelen.

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Photo by Carolina Gelen Author Notes A classic French pastry, the invention of the éclair is credited to Marie-Antoine Carême, the same chef known for the croquembouche. Both desserts hinge on pâte à choux-fun fact, choux translates as "cabbage," which is what the dough looks like when it bakes up, sort of.

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Yotam Ottolenghi: The world's best chocolate cake

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