Going bananas

We have all been there.  We go to the grocery store, we buy some bananas thinking that we will eat them before they go bad.  Then you forget about them and they are sitting on your counter all brown, squishy and should probably be thrown away.

Don't. 

Bananas that are almost rotten are the best bananas for baking and freezing. 

It was Sunday morning and I found myself in this situation, bananas that sat neglected on my counter top all week.  I hate wasting food and I hate wasting money, so I got to work.

(side note: I also had very little food in my house because I had been avoiding grocery shopping.  What happened below required a bit of creativity.)

Mostly, I was hungry.  It was breakfast time and I had coconut creamer and some juice in my fridge.  Food was nowhere to be found.   I contemplated going to iHop, but then realized I hated wasting money again.

What could I do with bananas and what I had left in my cabinets?

Banana muffins. 

-1 1/2 cups all purpose flour ( I used 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup homemade oat flour)
-1 1/2 tsp baking powder
-1/4 tsp baking soda
-1/8 tsp salt
-1 cup mashed bananas ( roughly 1.5 medium sized bananas)
-3/4 cup sugar ( I usually NEVER use white sugar, but I am trying to use mine up)
-3 tablespoons oil ( I used safflower)
-1 teaspoon lemon zest
-1/4 cup chopped walnuts, plus more for topping

Step one: preheat oven to 350 degrees, line muffin tin with liners or spray with non-stick cooking spray.

Step two: mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt until combined.

Step three: mash bananas into bowl until smooth, add sugar, oil, and lemon zest.  Add wet mixture to dry mixture and stir to combine.  Add walnuts. 

Step four: fill muffin tins with muffin batter (roughly 2/3 the way full).  Top with chopped walnut.
Step five: Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly before serving.

(While muffins bake feel free to sip coffee and watch half an episode of Doctor Who.)

My lovely bananas falling apart, 24 more hours and they would be garbage.

Too add nutrition and flavor, I made oat flour (which you can also buy) and used it in place for some of  the regular flour.  If you have a blender capable of doing this, I blend rolled-oats until they are a flour consistency.  I do this a lot.  It's one of my little 'clean baking' tricks. 

Dry ingredients to the left: flour, oat flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda.  And bananas.

Dry ingredients on left. Wet ingredients on right: sugar (yes, sugar is a 'wet' ingredient', lemon zest, safflower oil and mashed bananas.  I REALLY like adding a little bit of lemon juice or lemon zest to any recipe that uses banana. To me, banana has a weird taste on its own.  The lemon helps balance that out and adds a little 'pop' to the recipe.  I opted for zest rather than juice in this recipe as to not mess up the liquid to dry ratio.

Filled up 2/3 the way and topped with smashed walnuts.

Fresh out of the oven mostly 'clean' banana muffins.  My kitchen smelled AMAZING.  Pair one of these muffins with some scrambled egg whites and call it breakfast!

The final product.  Warm, banana-y, fresh, nutty delicious homemade banana muffins. 

So, what do you do with the rest of the bananas? FREEZE THEM.  Bananas freeze extremely well.  I keep mine around for green smoothies.  Make sure you chop the banana into slices before freezing- or it won't freeze right.  I think green smoothies always taste a lot better when it has a really ripe banana added to it, this makes it so I always have a 'ripe' banana on hand for my smoothies. 

For more on green smoothies, check out my post here http://caitlineatsandbakes.blogspot.com/2012/03/green-smoothies.html 


I hope you enjoyed my mis-adventures into leftover bananaland!

-Caitlin