All About: Baking with Bananas

Today we’re doing some baking tips – all about bananas.

Don’t we all love a perfect banana muffin? Perhaps with a delicious glaze on top?

Recipes usually call for “ripe bananas”. What exactly does that mean?

The yellow banana with speckles is a perfect-baking-banana. That, my friends, is a perfectly ripe banana, ready to be baked up in your favorite banana recipe.

Bananas are usually shipped to the market green so that they have longevity on the shelf, but at that point they are still mostly starch. As they ripen, the starch converts to sugar and their texture and flavor change, making them perfect for eating, slicing onto cereal or using in baked goods and desserts. That green banana in the picture will take at least 4 days to get to the yellow stage shown by the middle banana, so when you are at the grocery store, you can buy them and just place them on your counter (if you’re willing to wait).

Now, onto baking – when it says “ripe/very ripe,” then you want those black speckles with absolutely no hint of green; the banana could even be blacker and it would be perfect for this type of recipe, but it should be at least as ripe as shown. If you’re banana has turned very black – stick it in the fridge or freezer if you want to save your baking for a different day. The banana will last in the fridge for a couple of days. It will get VERY black. Don’t you worry. Inside it will be perfectly ripe and ready to mash.

If you’re using peanut butter in buttercream (because that would be Amazing. Capital A), shy away from using the crunchy peanut butter – the nuts will turn soft and mushy. You wouldn’t want them to loose their crunch.

You can store ripe bananas in the freezer up to a month. Just peel them first. You do not want to peel a frozen banana!

If all you have is a green banana and you want to bake NOW, there is a simple solution. You won’t believe how simple.

All you have to do is put the oven on 350˚ and place the green or semi-green bananas in the oven for 8-10 minutes. They come out soft and mushy – perfect for breakfast bake (or banana bread)!