Banana Bread Brownies are the perfect combination of a moist banana bread swirled with a dense chocolate brownie. Banana brownies are a must make dessert!
Banana bread brownies are unique. Go ahead and do a search for banana bread brownies and see what pops up. I mostly see recipes for things that look more like banana bars than desserts that resemble brownies. To me, if you're going to call something a brownie, it must have two things: a) chocolate and b) a brownie texture. These banana brownies have both!
I absolute love my pumpkin swirl brownies. I make them every fall. That recipe basically pairs a very thick, dense, chocolate layer with a pumpkin puree brownie batter (minus the chocolate layer). Those two layers get swirled together and baked to perfection. The result is an incredibly moist and flavorful dessert. I used that same exact recipe to make these banana bread brownies, but I just swapped the pumpkin puree and spices for mashed banana. Our house always seems to have overly ripe bananas laying around. If it's the same in your household, you'll want to save this banana brownie recipe to make over and over again!
How to make the perfect Banana Bread Brownies:
- I explain in the banana bread brownie recipe below the steps to make these awesome brownies, but here are some tips to make them perfect!
- Any time you bake with bananas, you'll want to choose ones that are very ripe. My preference is to use bananas that have an equal amount of yellow and brown.
- Here's another ripe banana tip for you: before you peel the banana, give it gentle but firm squeezes up and down until the entire fruit it mush. Then, when you peel it the entire banana will still stay whole but will already be perfectly mashed for your banana brownie batter.
- Always use parchment paper when you make these banana bread brownies. It's not necessary, but it makes it oh-so-easy to lift them out of the pan for easy cutting.
- The chocolate portion of the batter is very thick. You may even need to use your hands to spread it evenly across the bottom of the pan.
- If your chocolate brownie portion is too thick to squeeze on through a plastic bag, just use a spoon to throw globs on top of the banana batter. Then use a butter knife to swirl it all together. I've made this banana brownie recipe many times and it always seems to turn out perfectly.
- I highly recommend storing these banana bread brownies in the freezer in an air tight freezer bag. It prevents me from eating the entire pan in one sitting and because the banana brownies stay so incredibly moist, you can eat them straight out of the freezer because they're soft!
Full Recipe Instructions
Banana Bread Brownies
Ingredients
- ¾ cup all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- 1 ½ cups white sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 3 eggs
- ½ cup cocoa powder
- ½ cup mini chocolate chips
- 1 cup bananas (mashed, about 2 large ripe bananas)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350o F. Line or grease an 8x8 inch baking pan.
- Stir the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl.
- In a medium sauce pot over medium heat, melt butter. Continue to cook while it foams and stir constantly until it browns and you see some brown specks at the bottom and it starts to smell a bit toasted. Remove from heat. Once butter cools a bit, add sugar and vanilla extract. Next, beat in the eggs one at a time with a spoon. Gradually add the flour mixture, and stir the batter until it's evenly moistened. Divide the batter in half to two separate bowls.
- Into one bowl of batter, blend the cocoa powder and chocolate chips. This mixture will be very thick. In the second bowl of batter, stir in the mashed banana.
- Spread ½ of the chocolate batter into the bottom of the prepared baking pan, and follow with all of the banana batter. For the remaining chocolate batter, you can either spoon it on top or you can put it in a plastic bag, snip off the corner, and squeeze it onto the banana batter in lines. Use a butter knife or a spatula to swirl the two batters together to create a marbled appearance.
- Bake in the preheated oven until the brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes (mine took exactly 40 minutes and they were perfect). Cool in the pan, cut into squares, and serve.
NUTRITION INFORMATION
Love banana bread recipes?
You'll definitely want to try these:
Mrsdla
Great recipe. I think I will add pecans on top next time.
Kara
Wonderful recipe! This is the first of my many attempts to make brownies from scratch that turned out good. Thank you for sharing this!
Sandra
Hello. How much sugar should be used? I read the reviews and there seems to be some discrepancy about it. Someone said the books says
1/2 cup but the online recipes says 1 1/2 cups. Another said they cut the amount in half because they are to sweet with 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Please let me know as I do not want to make these until I know for sure.
They sound great. My family loves banana bread with chocolate chips so I thought these would be something new to try.
Krissy
I did use 1.5 cups of sugar in the recipe, but you can definitely reduce the amount. I found that it was perfectly sweet (you need a fair amount of sugar when using unsweetened cocoa powder)
Jule
Delicious and easy! Thank you for this recipe. I added a couple tablespoons milk to the cocoa batter to make it easier to spread.
Lea Morton
Delish, recipe is simple and easy to follow. Try not to eat them all in one sitting. 😀
annie esteban
Ate too much of it, so I turned around looking for the "Nutrition Facts" but I did not find any.
It was delicious, did not follow directions to the letter, i.e used salted butter because it was available, did not divide batter in two bowls before baking, did not swirl the banana but mixed it all the way. I guess I did all the shortcuts to cut time, i.e. mixed all the dry ingredients first then mixed in the wet ones.
Thank you. I will bring it to my next pot luck gathering.
Krissy
nutrition info added!
Rebecca
I've made these once before already and they were great they went very fast and I have a hankering for them all the time now definitely a new favorite. Thanks for the recipe .
Judy K Pfaff
Way too much sugar. I cut it in half. I put the chips in the mixture before the flour, so they melted into the batter. I added the powder and some more chips to the banana mixture. Excellent browies!!!
Stephanie
Hi there! I think you have a typo! It should be 1/2 cup sugar per the recipe in the book.
TRACY FISH
The recipe states 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar. Should it only be 1/2 cup?
Krissy
Nope. 1 1/2 cups.