Chocolate Orange Banana Bread with White Chocolate Chunks

Kudos to Barry C. Parsons for creating this amazing bread recipe.If you get a chance, head on over to his original recipe at this link: http://www.nlrockrecipes.com/2012/03/chocolate-orange-banana-bread-with.html
and check out some of his other recipes. They all look wonderful.

This is now my most favorite banana bread recipe. Sure, sometimes plain old banana bread sounds great, (as long as there are no nuts in it), but trust me when I tell you that this bread has such a fantastic  array of flavors and they all work together beautifully. I wish I was a better photographer, so you could genuinely see how great this bread looks, but I guess cooking and baking shall remain my only talents for now! So if you are looking for a new way to jazz up that old banana bread, this is definitely it!

*My white chocolate was in an enormous block, so I had trouble chopping it. Mine came out more "shaved" and that's why you can't see the white chocolate chunks in my sliced bread as much.The shavings were small and somewhat "melted" into the bread as it was cooking.

1 cup white sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs, beaten
3 medium ripe bananas, mashed

zest of one orange

1 3/4 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

juice of one orange
1/2 pound white chocolate, roughly chopped into chunks

Preheat oven to 325°.

Beat sugar and oil in a bowl. Add eggs, orange zest and mashed banana. Mix well.
Sift together dry ingredients and fold into banana mixture alternately with orange juice.
Fold in the white chocolate chunks. Pour batter into 1 large or two small greased loaf pans. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour depending upon pan size. Mine took well over an hour since I used a large loaf pan. Bake  until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.