Banana Chocolate Chip Challah

We started off the morning trying to come up with what kind of challah to make this week, and did not expect to start a blog. When I come home from college, I love to make challah from scratch to celebrate Shabbat. We figured that if we were going to make a new challah each week then we might as well share our experiences with everyone else. Like we have said before we are NOT challah experts, just 2 girls who enjoy baking.

The hardest part about choosing what challah to make is that everyone has to agree on it. With three people in the house, this is often the hardest part of the whole challah experience. Banana chocolate chip seemed to be our best choice this week. Bailey and I had to get all the ingredients and then we started our challah.

Bailey waiting in the car at the grocery store

Recipe: (makes 2 loaves of challah)

3/4 cup water

2 tsp active dry yeast
1.5 tbsp honey
2 eggs: 1 for dough and 1 for egg baste

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 1 1/2 bananas)

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

3-4 cups of flour

1 cup chocolate chips

Amount of banana and chocolate can be adjusted based on how much banana and chocolate you like. Our mom LOVES chocolate so ours is very chocolaty

Start off by adding very warm water to a big bowl (like the size below). Add the yeast and stir together with a wooden spoon. When bubbles start the rise the yeast has been activated. 

Add the honey, 1 egg, vegetable oil, bananas, sugar and salt. Add the flour, mixing after each cup of flour. You may need more or less than 4 cups of flour depending on how sticking the dough is. When the dough can no longer be mixed with a spoon, star kneeding the ingredients together. Roll into a ball and cover with saran wrap. Let rise for 1+ hours, or until the ball has doubled in size.

After the dough has risen, add in the chocolate chips and kneed together. This would be a good time to set the oven to 350. Then braid the challah, view our Braids and Shapes page for different braids.

Butter the cooking sheet and then place the braided challah on the sheet

 

Beat the remaining egg with a fork and baste the challah. Place in the over for 30 minutes or until internal temperature is around 170 degrees.

And tada! It was so good we had to have a piece when it came out of the oven. It was super doughy, chocolaty and sweet.

So maybe our first challah wasn't exactly the prettiest challah but it tasted amazing. Hopefully as the weeks go on, the challahs will start to look a little better. I also think that we should have used a little more banana so that it stands out a little more.

This is what the challah is actually supposed to look like, thanks of our friend Jordyn who used our recipe.