Quote of the Now

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do
Rumi

Saturday, December 01, 2012

Frozen Bananas

You can never have too many recipe ideas for frozen bananas. Because, inevitably, you find yourself with very ripe bananas that are tossed into the freezer for "later" use.
The easiest (and arguably the tastiest) use for these bananas is as an ice cream substitute. Just mash 'em up. Sugar-free (besides naturally occurring fruit sugars), dairy-free, gluten-free and delicious.  That was Abi's first "ice creams". 
Frozen chunks are also good for teething babies starting around nine months. Especially if you have one of those new mesh bag feeders.
The next easiest use for frozen bananas, IMHO, is fruit smoothies.  Toss in whatever else you like - milk, yogurt, orange juice, berries...

Then there's the classic Banana Bread. Everyone has their go-to banana bread recipe. (Right?)

Yesterday I needed to bake for two potlucks (alas, I didn't make it out to the first due to icy roads). I knew we had bananas to use up. I planned to bake a couple banana breads.  Sadly, I faced two obstacles: 1) one of the containers with frozen bananas turned out to contain very freezer-burnt 'naners. I have no idea how long my mom's had them in there.  I was thus two bananas short. 2) I couldn't find the recipe box with our recipe nor could I find it in the recipe book it came from here at my parents'.
I did, however, find another recipe that - once upon a time - I had left a note beside: "Excellent!"  Clearly I had made it before and thought it was darn tasty.
I made a double batch and damn, I was right! It's tasty.  So here it is from a Kinette Cook Book of some early year.
(Cover has been burnt off by my dad. Several pages are also scorched. Why yes, my dad does leave things/put things down on hot burners on the stove.)
I'm slightly revising this a la Mandy

Banana Coffee Cake 

Preheat oven to 350

Beat together in a large bowl
1/2 c. soft butter / margarine
1 c (or a little less as I prefer) sugar
3 eggs

Sift together
2 c. sifted AP flour (or unsifted if you're lazy like me)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

 Mash
1 c. bananas (about 2 bananas)
Alternate blending the dry and banana into the mixture. 

Spoon batter into a 13x9", greased pan.

Combine a topping of (I didn't have any butter left to use and didn't want to worry about coconut allergies, so I simply sprinkled on brown sugar)
3/4 c brown sugar
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp flour

Cut in
2 tbsp butter.
Mix in
1 c. flaked coconut
Sprinkle mixture over cake.

 Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Enjoy.

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