Mouth-watering chocolate chip banana muffins

By: Grace Coughlan, Associate Editor

Photo and muffins by Grace Coughlan/ The Towerlight

As a lover of bananas, I’ve always had a soft-spot for chocolate chip banana bread. A family friend has dropped off a loaf or two of her family’s recipe numerous times and I devour it every time. After seeing baking highlights on Instagram, I decided to tackle chocolate chip banana bread myself. I’m going to be sharing the marbled chocolate chip banana bread recipe from Smitten Kitchen and giving some tips and tricks.

For those who don’t know, marbled chocolate chip banana bread is a mixed dough, with the chocolate mix and the banana mix swirled together to create that marbled effect. The recipe was overall easy to follow and it allows any baker to make their own accommodations to the recipe. 

Instead of making a full loaf, I decided to make muffins as it was individualized and easier to freeze and save for later. I’ll share the recipe I followed with the changes that I made below.

Smitten Kitchen’s Marbled Chocolate Chip Banana Bread:

Serves: 10 – 12 people 

Time: 1 hour 

Bake Time: 25 – 30 minutes

Ingredients: 

  • 1 stick of unsalted butter, melted 
  • 3 ripe bananas 
  • 1 egg 
  • ¾ cup light brown sugar 
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda 
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
  • 1 ¼ cup of flour 
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ¼ cup dark cocoa powder 
  • ¾ cup chocolate chips 


Preheat the oven to 350 F. If you are using a loaf pan, make sure to spray the pan. You can also use cupcake pans with liners. 

In a large bowl, melt butter until it’s liquid in the bowl. Then, mash the bananas into the melted butter. If you prefer more chunks of banana, don’t mash as much. If you prefer less texture, mash until creamy. The egg, brown sugar, vanilla, salt and baking soda should be added to this mixture. After adding in each ingredient, make sure to whisk it in thoroughly. Lastly, add 1 cup of flour in. 

After mixing the flour into the batter, distribute the batter into two bowls. Try to make the batter as equal as possible. Pour ¼ cup of flour into one bowl. Mix the rest of the flour in. In the other bowl, add in all of the chocolate ingredients: the chocolate chips and cocoa powder. 

Alternate adding the banana mix batter and the chocolate batter into the cups in the pan. It was challenging to follow the checkerboard pattern so I mixed the two batters together. Try to use a toothpick to swirl the batter together instead of a fork. The toothpick will help get a better swirl pattern. The first time I made the muffins, there was a more distinct difference between the banana mixture and the chocolate mixture. If you want the flavors to blend together more, I suggest spending more time mixing the batter in the individual muffin cups before baking.

Photo and muffins by Grace Coughlan/ The Towerlight

If you’re baking muffins, make sure to bake for less time than a loaf. Remember that muffins are a smaller unit of batter so that they’ll take less time to bake as opposed to a loaf which is a larger amount of batter.

Lastly, remember to have fun with it! It’s important that we all find ways to destress and enjoy ourselves. Baking could be something for you! 

For the full Smitten Kitchen loaf recipe, check out their website.




3 thoughts on “Mouth-watering chocolate chip banana muffins

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