Banana Crumb Cake With Chocolate Chips

Moist, crumbly and packed with flavor, this banana crumb cake with chocolate chips will make your afternoon coffee more irresistible. This is the 3rd recipe for banana cake on this blog, not only because we love it so much (specially Lucas) but also because we always end up with overripe bananas in our house. I know there are other things you can do with overripe bananas like, sweetening a milk shake, caramelizing them, eating them with ice cream, or even pancakes. It doesn't matter, we always end up with cake.

I also added chocolate chips because… Well I don’t have other reasonable explanations other that I’m a chocoholic and need help. Also because chocolate makes everything OK. Right? The only way you would understand me is by making this cake, only then you’ll see why I added chocolate ;). 

Have a happy rest of the week everyone! 

Ingredients:

For the topping:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

7 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts

For the cake:

2 cups all-purposed flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 pinch of salt

3/4 cup sugar

2 large eggs, room temperature

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup milk, room temperature

3 ripe bananas, mashed

2 tbsp sour cream (optional but helps with moisture)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup of chocolate chips

Pre-heat the oven to 350 ˚F.

Grease a 9"x9" cake pan and set aside. In a food processor, mix together all the topping ingredients (except the walnuts). Pulse a few times until the mixture resemble bread crumbs. Transfer it to a bowl and stir in the walnuts, cover and place it in the fridge while we prepare the cake batter.

In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt, set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the sugar and eggs until light and fluffy, about 4-5 minutes. In another mixing bowl, combine the oil, milk, bananas, sour cream and vanilla extract, whisk well until smooth then add it to the mixer and mix well. Set your mixer on low speed and add the dry ingredients. Mix until just combine. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Pour the batter into the greased pan then add the crumb mixture from the fridge. It might seem like a lot of crumb but it's not so add the whole thing. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Enjoy it slightly warm and share! 

Note: You can leave the crumb part out and just make the cake.