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I made you this nourishing 7 ingredient chocolate chip ricotta banana bread because on Friday’s we NEED chocolate.
And since chocolate plus banana is honestly one of my favorite combos, I decided to make a Healthy January recipe out of the two. You guys are so very welcome. 🙂
In all seriousness, while I may hate these photos, I LOVE this bread. In fact it’s possibly my favorite banana bread recipe. It’s so quick, so easy, so healthy and so good! Wow, that was a lot of SO’s, but honestly, this bread is amazing. What I love most is that, unlike most banana bread recipes, this one is not overly sweet in any way and it has some serious, serious banana flavor happening, which is everything I could want in a banana bread.
I feel like often times banana bread recipes can be so overly sweet that they actually lose the yummy banana flavor. This is probably because I am the world’s biggest banana loving freak, but whatever, bananas are the best. Plus, they’re pretty much the only fruit, other than dates and avocados, that I would ever dare to pair with chocolate.
The second best part to this bread, other than it’s deliciousness? The fact that it has only seven ingredients, yes, only SEVEN! Eight if you count, salt which I am not. AND it would only be six ingredients if you left out the chocolate…but then, I am not sure why anyone would do that.
I was out hiking a week or so ago and thinking about recipes, as I normally do when hiking, when the thought hit me that I had never seen a banana bread recipe that used ricotta cheese. I’m sure it’s been done, but I personally have not seen it, and the idea intrigued me so much. I love anything ricotta, chocolate, and banana, so I knew right away that I had to try it out.
My goal was to create a super moist bread, but use minimal ingredients. I’m all about the whole “less is more” thing right now, and with this banana bread I wanted the banana, chocolate and ricotta to shine.
The ingredients are as follows…
…bananas: a total of four, for some serious banana flavor and moist bread.
…ricotta cheese: for a major protein factor and killer flavor.
…eggs: heart healthy fats and another major protein (maybe I should have called this protein packed banana bread?).
…vanilla: because I simply cannot make banana bread without vanilla…it’s a must.
…whole wheat flour: got to have those whole grains.
…baking powder: for some lightness
…chocolate chips: enough said.
Yes, you guys, you read that right. Zero added sugar. None. I just want to put it out there that this bread is not sweet. I mean, it’s sweet from the bananas and chocolate, but it’s just not overly sweet. It was perfect for my tastes as well as my family’s, so I feel like you guys will LOVE it too. If you really only love a sweeter banana bread, try adding a few tablespoons of your favorite sugar or even honey.
Also, I know some of you might question the ricotta as being healthy, but personally, I see it as a protein packed food, loaded with calcium.
This bread is not only has nourishing ingredients, it’s also nourishing for our souls. Seriously. Especially on a Friday after a grueling long, sometimes seemingly never-ending, but still awesome, week. Yes, it’s safe to say that I am happy it’s Friday! And happy to have some time to make another loaf of this bread. It’s only been a few days, but I’m in need of a chocolate fix and this bread literally takes maybe ten minutes tops to throw together and get into the oven. It’s the perfect sweet and healthy treat for tonight.
I love to eat this bread warm out of the oven, with a side of ice-cold (goat) milk, but it’s still great at room temperature. Since this bread is not very sweet, you can drizzle it with a little honey before serving for a touch of extra sweetness. Honey compliments the flavors of the ricotta really well and is perfect drizzled on while the bread is still warm. SOOO GOOOOD.
Perfect to make tonight or sometime this weekend. Who is ready?
WATCH THE HOW-TO VIDEO HERE:
Nourishing 7 Ingredient Chocolate Chip Ricotta Banana Bread.
Ingredients
- 4 medium, ripe bananas, mashed
- 1 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
- 2 eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups white whole wheat or whole what pastry flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- pinch of kosher salt, optional
- 1 cup semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips
- honey, for serving (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 9x5 inch bread pan with parchment paper.
- In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the mashed bananas, ricotta, eggs, and vanilla. Add the flour, baking powder and pinch of salt. Mix until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Transfer to the oven and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. I like to bake mine around 45 minutes for an extra doughy bread! Drizzle with honey if desired. Enjoy warm or at room temp...but warm is best!
Nutrition
Nutritional information is only an estimate. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed.
Did you make this recipe? Please rate & comment below.
That would be me!! Let’s do this weekend thing already.
I really want to try this as I have some ricotta I want to finish up using but I do not have any whole wheat flour left. Can I use white flour?
Hi Lynn,
Yes all purpose flour would be okay to use. I hope you love the recipe, please let me know if you have any other questions! xTieghan
Just out of the oven. Beautiful.
Thank you Mercedes!! xTieghan
so 4 years later, can I use regular all purpose flour??
Thanks!
Hi Ann! Yes that should work great! I hope you love this recipe! xTieghan
Can all purpose flour be used in place of whole wheat flour?
Hi Sharon! Yes that will work great! I hope you love this recipe! xTieghan
Hello!
This sounds awesome and I happen to have all of the ingredients! Wondering if it would be possible to convert this into muffins instead of a loaf? Do you think it would work?
Hi Elise! Yes, I think that will work great! I hope you love this recipe! Please let me know if you have any other questions! xTieghan
I can’t attached the photo, but it was amazing! Thank you so much 🙂
Thank you so much Lana! I am so glad this turned out so well for you! xTieghan
I tried this yesterday and like some of the others, even after adding 10 minutes to the baking time I found the middle was very dense and overly moist. I followed the recipe almost exactly- the only changes being that I used 3 large bananas and I didn’t have pastry flour so I used All-purpose and subbed a few tablespoons of it with cornstarch (to make it more like pastry flour). It’s still delicious but it’s not very bread-like.
Hi Paige! I am sorry this did not turn out too well for you! Did you try tenting foil over the top? I would love to help make this better for you! xTieghan
Extremely good and easy banana bread! Still sweet from the bananas, you don’t miss the sugar at all.
Right?! Thank you Lauren! So glad you enjoyed this! xTieghan
Inspired by Lauren’s post back in January 2017 (it’s January 2020 now) I found myself with no dessert around 5:00pm and had two old (very) bananas from Christmas so thought I’d whip this up. No added sugar in this recipe was so exciting. My husband loved it, moist and dense, so good. Sitting outside by the fire pit under a full moon and thankful for HalfBakedHarvest blog.
Awh that is so great to hear! Thank you so much Mary! xTieghan
Hi there, my cake just wouldn’t be done even after 60 mins of baking, I followed the recipe to the T. Is ricotta adding too much moisture that it’s not baking at all?
HI! I am sorry you had trouble. Was there anything you did differently at all? Any ingredients different? Method of baking this? Any info will be helpful to help me problem solve and figure out what might be happening for you. It’s hard to know without knowing any details. Hope I can help you! xTieghan
It really isn’t very sweet but the addition of honey on top is lovely. I would strain my ricotta cheese next time as the loaf was a bit overly moist! Would make again for sure.
I am glad to hear that! Thank you so much Vivien! xTieghan
I had leftover ricotta and brown bananas languishing on the bench, and came across your page. What a fabulous recipe!! You’ve made 2 little boys (and their mum!) very happy in Australia. I think we’ve eaten half straight out of the oven – it is just so delicious. Thank you!
That is so amazing to hear! I am so glad you and your family loved this recipe, Bryony! xTieghan
I’ve made this banana bread several times and it continues to be a favorite 🙂
While I eat plenty of gluten, I wanted to use up some chickpea flour the other day, so I swapped it 1:1 for the wheat flour. You might be interested to know that it worked perfectly! I baked the batter up as muffins and have been snacking on them all week. Thanks for sharing, love your posts!!
Thank you so much Kelsey! I am sure people will love to hear that this worked well with chickpea flour! xTieghan
I wanted to love this, but I just couldn’t get it to bake? I think I cooked it for about an hour and a half and just never got the knife to come out clean. The edges were all dark by the end, but the interior retained a sticky dense texture. Only difference I can think of is we used 3 large bananas, but we made the coconut version of your banana bread today as well with the same amount of bananas and it came out perfect (granted we made those in muffin tins and then borrowed a bread pan for the ricotta version). If we try this again we will have to try it with a muffin pan…
Hey Emily! I am so sorry you had trouble with this recipe. I don’t think the issue was the amount of bananas. What size is your baking pan? Did you cook in the center of the oven? Any info you can give me would help for me to problem solve and figure out what is happening.
This is delicious. Very moist. I did use only a half a cup of dark chocolate chips because it was all I had and I actually am enjoying it light on the chocolate.. The weirdest thing though..my banana bread took way longer to cook. An hour and ten minutes. Brand new oven. Either way it was soo delicious.
Thank you so much India! I am so glad you loved this! xTieghan