Chocolate Swirl Banana Bread

Ingredients

1 stick butter, room temperature

2 fairly ripe bananas

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup sugar

4 eggs

½ cup half and half or whole milk

Zest (peel) of one orange

1 Tbsp dark rum

1 ½ cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

½ tsp dry ginger

3.5 oz bar of dark chocolate

3 Tbsp butter

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Spray a bread pan with baking spray.

In the bowl of a standing mixer or with a hand held mixer, cream butter until smooth, about two minutes.

Add bananas and sugars a beat another minute.

Add in eggs and beat thoroughly. (Note: this is not pretty batter – it always looks kind of lumpy – don’t worry – pretty when cooked!)

Add milk and rum, combine to mix.

Add dry ingredient and mix just until blended.

Put chocolate and 3 Tbsp of butter in a medium size microwaveable bowl and melt stirring once about 90 seconds. (Or melt in a double boiler)

Mix about one third of the banana batter into the melted chocolate.

Fill bread pan with batter, alternating sides with chocolate batter and banana batter. It will run together a bit making great patterns (The Rorschach test of breads!).

Bake for about an hour and ten minutes until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting. Delicious!