It's always been a bit of a problem, especially in the summer when bananas turn super fast. And since it's difficult for one person to eat a bunch of bananas in the two days that they're actually at their tastiest (in my opinion) I've had to come up with a lot of ideas of things to do with them when they're no longer in their prime.
Lucky for me, bananas are extremely versatile and can be used a lot of different ways. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who doesn't like their bananas too ripe so I thought I'd share what I like to do with bananas when they're past the point of me just peeling and eating it.
Things to do with bananas when they're no longer green:
- Make banana-peanut butter toast! Just toast a piece of whole wheat bread, spread it with peanut butter and top with a sliced banana. A delicious, nutritious and filling breakfast that will stick with ya til lunch.
- Make a Chunky Monkey Smoothie!
1/4 cup milk, 1 banana, 2 TBSP chocolate milk mix, 2 TBSP peanut butter, 2-3 ice cubes and blend
- Make a banana-peanut butter-granola wrap! Take a whole wheat soft-shell tortilla, spread with peanut butter, sprinkle with granola then place banana in the middle, roll up and enjoy! This could also be for an on-the-go breakfast.
Things to do with bananas when they're ripe/overly ripe:
- Make banana pancakes
a) Mash up a banana and add it to you regular pancake recipe or mix
 |
| Happy food! |
b) Healthy, gluten free banana pancakes
2 eggs, 1 mashed up banana, a little cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of vanilla - mix is all together and cook like you would a regular pancake. I was afraid these would be really eggy but they weren't actually, they cooked up just like regular pancakes! I topped them with a little cream cheese and cinnamon-sugar and they were quite delicious!
- Make banana bread! Or banana muffins which are easy to share with friends as I've been doing :)
- Make Peanut Butter-Oatmeal-Banana Cookies! For breakfast!!
These are soooo yummy! I made some last week and not only could I bake them in my lil toaster oven (!) they made my whole apartment smell like this delicious peanut butter-banana scent. The original recipe calls for vanilla protein powder and butter extract but also said it was optional so I didn't use them... I also didn't have any nuts to add so I just used crunchy peanut butter. And I only made a half recipe which made about 9 cookies.
Basically my recipe looked like this:
1 ripe banana, mashed
1/4 cup + 1/8 cup chunky peanut butter
1/3 cup applesauce
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup old fashioned oats
1/8 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350* (or don't if you're using a toaster oven like me). Combine the banana and peanut butter in a medium-sized bowl. Add applesauce and vanilla. Then add oatmeal and chocolate chips. Let dough stand for 10 minutes then drop by spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet (or greased piece of aluminum foil with cleverly folded sides in my case) and flatten. Bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on your oven and how done you want the cookies. I went about 23 minutes.)
These cookies can be eaten right away or stored for later. If you can only work in small batches like me then the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for later also :)
Clearly I'm a big fan of the peanut butter-banana combo hehe. I've also read that bananas can be mashed up and used as a moisturizing facial mask but I kindof don't want to waste a banana on my face when I can make one of these magical foods instead... I'll let you know if I try it one day though!
How do these sound? What do you do with old bananas?
