Cocoa Banana Bars

I came across this recipe on allrecipes.com a month or so ago and decided I'd give it a shot the next time I had ripe bananas lying around. unfortunately we kept eating all the bananas I bought. Finally last week I bought a ridiculously huge bunch of bananas for the sole reason of having left over ripe ones with which to bake :)

Cocoa Banana Bars; Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
1 cups sugar
1 egg
vanilla
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup cocoa powder

First, cream together your butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in your egg and vanilla and mix until smooth.

Next, add in your mashed bananas and mix it all together.

Put all your dry ingredients in a large bowl, and mix 'em together. Make a well in the flour.

Then pour in your banana mixture. And stir.

Once your batter is evenly mixed, pour half of it into a greased baking pan. The recipe said to use a 9x13 pan. I followed directions, but ended up with this:

The half portion of the batter couldn't be evenly spread all the way through the pan. This made me think I needed to used a smaller size. So I went ahead and greased my good old 9x7 and made the switch. I love making dirty dishes, clearly.

With the remaining half of the batter, stir in the 1/4 cups of cocoa powder.

Spoon the chocolate batter over the regular batter, and swirl to make a marble looking pattern.

I wasn't all that great at the whole "swirling" thing. Haha. I need to practice I guess.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. I ended up letting mine go for an additional 5, because the small pan made them thicker than originally intended. I think you really are supposed to use the big 9x13 size, because the batter does rise quite a bit.

Slice and enjoy! These were pretty yummy! They're like the love child of banana bread and brownies. Definitely give them a shot!