Gaby
According to some sources, Christopher Columbus — often credited with ‘discovering’ the Americas — at first showed little interest in the cacao tree that local tribes revered. He reportedly mistook the strange pods for goat droppings. The Aztecs, Incas, and Maya used cocoa beans as currency: they paid taxes and services with them and traded them for goods and clothing. Cocoa beans were so valuable that a dozen could buy a rabbit and a hundred could buy a slave. The price of cocoa pods depended on how difficult they were to harvest. A 1555 decree set one Spanish real at 140 cocoa beans. Cocoa money circulated in central parts of South America until the early 19th century. So let’s honor cocoa by making a healthy, delicious, and historically rich dish like this one.
Ingredients (for 8 servings): 1 cup all-purpose flour; ½ cup sugar; 2 eggs; 2 bananas; 2 tablespoons cocoa powder; ¼ cup milk; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1/8 cup vegetable oil; ¼ teaspoon salt.
Blend the eggs, oil, sugar, and chopped bananas in a large mixing bowl using a blender. Sift and mix the dry ingredients—flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt—in a separate bowl. Combine the wet and dry mixtures, gradually adding the milk at the end. Stir once more, then pour the batter into a greased baking pan.
Bake the banana cocoa bread for 40 minutes in a preheated oven at 180 °C (350 °F).
Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool. When it is completely cool, serve the bread.
Life Hack
Because banana bread is a type of ‘quick bread,’ it uses chemical leaveners like baking soda or baking powder instead of yeast. Quick breads rise faster with baking soda or baking powder than breads leavened with yeast.
