things you can do with old bananas..

I live near a pretty awesome independently owned and operated grocery store that has a bruised / old produce cart. I'll admit that I am a frequenter of the cart, and I have made it a habit to pick up bruised bananas (who wouldn't you get like 5 bananas for $1) take them home..peel them..and put them in my freezer. Unfortunately I buy more bruised bananas than I have time to bake, so my freezer is now full of bags of bruised bananas (which I'll admit is a little strange, even for me). My point is, there are a lot of things you can do with bruised bananas, one of which is, banana bread...the other is (naturally..) banana nut muffins.

Banana Bread:

ingredients

3 or 4 ripe bananas (if you use old frozen bananas, you will need to thaw them and drain off the water)
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup of sugar
1 beaten egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
a pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of flour

method:

start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees. Then mix the melted butter into the bananas (I usually mash the bananas and mix in the butter at the same time). Add the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle in the baking soda, salt and mix well. Add the flour last and pour into a buttered bread pan. The mixture should be sticky and moist. Bake for 45 minutes (may need more time depending on your oven. you'll know it's done when a knife comes out clean)

I have also made this banana bread with other seasonal fruits added in. Mid summer, I added fresh apricots and a little but of almond extract for flavor.


Banana muffins: these are pretty similar to the banana bread. Same basic principle, different form.

ingredients

2 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
2-3 ripe bananas (again, if frozen, thaw)
1/2 cup of butter
2 eggs
6 tablespoons of milk
2 teaspoons baking powder (the original recipe I used called for 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda as well, but I didn't use it because I was out and it didn't make much of a difference)
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
(I also added 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom and a little nutmeg)
1/2 teaspoon of salt
walnuts (optional. but why not. Walnuts are totally brainfood.)

method:

mix your flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon (and other spices if desired) and set aside. Then, in a separate bowl cream the butter (melt it first) and bananas. Add the eggs, sugar and milk and mix until smooth. Fold together the flour mixture with the banana mix (add walnuts if desired) and then pour into greased muffin tins (only fill 3/4ths of the way) and bake in a preheated oven to 350 for about 25 minutes.