Peanut Butter & Chocolate Marbled Banana Bread

Oh peanut butter and chocolate, my forever favorite flavor combo. I owe it all to my childhood (and also adulthood) love of Reese’s peanut butter cups. They are the ULTIMATE candy in my opinion, and honestly just an all around immaculate snack. However, this Marbled Banana Bread has entered the chat and good gosh are we bowing down to Reese’s with this.

This banana bread was one hundred percent inspired by my favorite candy. My love for the peanut butter and chocolate combo has been entirely unwavering for my whole 26+ years of life. I mean one of my favorite childhood past times was just taking pieces of a chocolate bar and dipping them in peanut butter. The absolute best.

This new recipe was born from two of my absolute favorite banana bread recipes, double chocolate banana bread and brown butter chocolate chip banana bread. And while both of those are fairly simple recipes, this one is just slightly more complex, just because of the way we mix both batters separately, but have no fear – all the tips below for a successful banana bread!

Marbled Banana Bread Tips

1. Make sure you have three mixing bowls on hand before starting. They don’t have to be huge, but enough to fit about half the banana bread batter. 🙂 Plus, rummaging around for mixing bowls while you are baking is no fun, so just start with them already on hand.
2. If you have dutch processed cocoa powder, I always recommend using it over just normal cocoa powder. Dutch processed is smoother and has a richer flavor which is a lot tastier in this recipe. Additionally, I do not recommend subbing cacao for the cocoa powder.
3. Make sure you are using runny peanut butter – ideally, the ingredients would just be peanuts or peanuts and salt. This peanut butter mixes much easier into the batter, whereas a no-stir peanut butter just wont quite mix in.
4. In steps 4 and 5 below in the recipe card, we are simply separating the dry ingredients in half (step 4) and separating the wet batter in half (step 5) so we can make our chocolate and peanut butter batters separately. This is a very simple process, but just in case you needed a bit more clarification!

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Marbled Banana Bread

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Recipe by Lindsey Goldschmidt

Servings

12

servings

Prep time

20

minutes

Cooking time

50

minutes

Ingredients

• 1/2 Cup Unsalted Butter

• 2/3 Cup Brown Sugar

• 1/4 Cup Maple Syrup

• 2 Eggs

• 2 Large Ripe Bananas

• 1.5 Cup All Purpose Flour

• 1/4 Cup Cocoa Powder

• 2 Tbsp Runny Peanut Butter

• 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda

• 1/2 tsp Salt

• 2/3 Cup Chocolate chips

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line a 9×11 loaf pan with parchment paper – set aside.
• Begin first by melting the butter. Set aside and let the butter cool.
• While the butter is cooling, add your bananas to a large mixing bowl and mash until smooth. Then, add eggs, maple syrup, brown sugar and cooled butter to the same bowl and whisk until combined.
• Set the bowl of wet ingredients aside and get two more mixing bowls. To each bowl, add 3/4 cup flour, 1/4 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt & 1/3 cup chocolate chips.
• To only one of the bowls, add 1/4 cup cocoa powder. To the other bowl, add 2 Tbsp peanut butter.
• Next, to each bowl of dry ingredients, add 1 & 1/4 cup of the wet ingredient mixture that we made in step 3.
• Fold together the ingredients in each bowl and set them aside. These are our peanut butter and chocolate banana bread batters.
• Then, grab your parchment-lined loaf pan and begin adding the batter. To get the marbled look as shown in the photos above, alternate adding 1/4 cup of each batter (chocolate and peanut butter) to the pan until all of the batter for each flavor is in the loaf pan.
• Slice and enjoy!
• Bake for 49-52 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean of any batter (besides any melted chocolate chips) and let the loaf cool for about an hour.