Petite Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Loaves

In my opinion, the best bread/muffin combination is banana and chocolate chip.  Banana bread is good on its own, but once you add chocolate chips it makes it that much better.  In January when I started my Muffin Tuesday tradition, I made a list of all the recipes I wanted to try, but the one staple missing was a healthy banana chocolate chip muffin recipe.  I had seen a recipe on Skinnytaste for Petite Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Loaves, but I did not have a mini loaf pan and for some reason it didn't seem like it would be as good to me if I adapted the recipe for muffins.  So, after a few months passed and my sister kept looking at the recipe, she finally decided to cave in and buy a mini loaf  pan.  Once the pan arrived in the mail, I immediately made the loaves. 

What is great about these is that they are bigger than muffins, but the same amount of points on weight watchers (5)!  I halved the recipe (though my sister wishes I would've made eight) and pretty much made no other changes.  The recipe (http://www.skinnytaste.com/2012/01/petite-chocolate-chip-banana-bread.html) has a lot of banana, flour, baking soda, salt, egg white, applesauce, vanilla, a little bit of butter, and chocolate chips.  I upped the amount of chocolate chips to 1 oz because it was the same amount of points when I put in the recipe to weight watchers, and who doesn't love more chocolate!  

When you put the batter into the pan, you can tell right away how big these are going to be!  They go into the oven at 325 degrees for 40 minutes, which is a bit torturous to wait for.  What makes it even harder is that the whole kitchen (and if you live in NYC, the whole apartment!) starts to smell like banana bread.  

These come out of the oven looking like perfect little banana bread loaves!  It looks even better than a muffin because you get your own personal loaf, and, lets be honest, who doesn't want their own banana bread!  These have such a strong banana flavor because that is the prominent ingredient, which is what I love.  The chocolate chips do not overwhelm the banana flavor because there are not many chocolate chips in the recipe, but you appreciate it more when you reach a chocolatey bite.

If you are a banana and/or chocolate lover, you should give this recipe a try.  You can play around with it and switch out the chocolate chips for nuts, or simply just make them as banana bread, though I do recommend keeping the chocolate chips.  They are really delicious and bigger than muffins, so they are more filling too!