My World

One of my favorite childhood memories involves chocolate bananas. My father was an avid Earnest Hemingway fan. His favorite book was The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. As far back as I can remember we took an annual road trip to Key West for a two week stay on the island.  This was throughout the 1960s into the mid 70s when I graduated high school and moved on into my adult life.

This yearly adventure involved an overnight stay halfway between central Alabama and the island. There was only one road to get there and NO intestate highways. What is still a long near 15 hour drive today was closer to 24 hours back then.  Five of us,  my older brother, younger sister and our parents piled into the car………at least one of those years when my brother and I were around 9 and 10 and the sister was 3 it was a VW beetle!!!!!…… and off we went for the long trek. 

Once there we lived in a small “efficiency” (tiny kitchen for cooking meals) apartment for two glorious weeks of roaming what back then was a 4×4 mile quaint sparsely populated island.

There were certain things we always looked forward to and did every single year.  Lunch at Sloppy Joe’s (Hemingway’s favorite bar) of shrimp boiled in beer, walking to the southern most point each night to watch the sun set,  deep sea fishing on a large charter boat, visiting the Hemingway house and petting the Six toed cats that descended from his first one that was gifted to him.

But the FIRST thing my parents always did once we were settled in the apartment was to walk with us into the tiny town and stop at the local street vendor that had a little freezer on wheels. He sold ONE product. That product was Bananas on a popsicle stick dipped in chocolate and frozen! It was the highlight of us kids day. We had never heard of them anywhere else than Key West. We spent lots of time over those years in Florida between Miami, Gainesville, St. Augustine, Tarpon Springs and other cities.  But Key West was the only place we found this treat. Of course today there are lots of online recipes for them.  This Recipe is the closest to the whole banana ones we got there as it was not ganache chocolate like most use now. 

Honestly,  I have not eaten a frozen chocolate banana since the last time we visited Key West as a family fifty years ago……. that is actually the last visit I made to the island also.  But that fond memory has always lingered.  So yesterday I baked one of my weekly healthy snacks of Oat flour banana bread. The mixture as written in the recipe was ready to go in the pan and I decided to finely shave 4 sections of a bar of semisweet baking chocolate to add to the mixture. Oh my GOODNESS! That memory had floated to the surface of my mind prompting my action.

This has GOT to be the BEST version of this recipe. Not overpowering in chocolate flavor. The banana is the front flavor…. but that essence of chocolate brought out the chocolate banana flavor perfectly.

This is definitely at the top of my goto list for breakfast bread recipes going forward. Still healthy, nutritious and now even more wonderfully tasty.