Foodie Weekender by Bronte Hogarth
Have you ever been looking in the fruit bowl at home and seen some very overripe bananas sitting there? For whatever reason they did not get eaten, maybe they were buried beneath the other fruits, or perhaps no one in the house was feeling like bananas that week. These bananas do not need to go to waste.
DID YOU KNOW? When wasted food is thrown away and breaks down in landfill, it contributes greatly to global warming.
There are many tasty things to cook with overripe bananas, I mean the really soft ones which no one desires to eat. One of the easiest and most popular recipes which uses overripe bananas is Banana Bread.
Here is a recipe for a delicious Banana and Walnut bread. You can add a little flair to this banana bread too, through which yoghurt you choose to use in the ingredients. Enjoy!
Ingredients:
7 tablespoons of butter
7 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 egg
4 overripe bananas (mashed)
45 ml natural yoghurt, or if you can get your hands on it; coconut flavoured yogurt for a more coco-banana taste
5 ml vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon bi-carb soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
1/2 cup walnuts (chopped)
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 180C/350F
- Grease a loaf/or bunt tin.
- Beat the butter/oil and sugar together until creamy and then add the egg and continue beating until smooth.
- Add the mashed bananas, yoghurt and vanilla essence.
- Sift together flour, bicarb, cinnamon and salt and beat this gradually into the banana mix.
- Finally stir in the chopped nuts.
- Bake for about an hour until a knife inserted comes out clean.
Serves: Makes 8 slices cooked in a loaf tin , or 12 slices cooked in a bunt tin as per pictures.
No-Waste Tip: Bananas
- Choose firm unblemished fruit, try to only buy for immediate use, especially in summer. Store bananas at room temperature in the open (not in the cupboard) so they do not ripen too quickly. Once ripe, they can be stored in the fridge but note their skin will turn black. Choose bananas at different stages of ripeness so they do not all ripen at once. You can use overripe bananas for baking or them and use for smoothies.*
For more no-waste fruit tips visit Love Food Hate Waste, a previous partner of 1 Million Women.
Don’t forget to head over to our website! We are daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers getting on with practical climate action to live better for us and the planet. Join the movement at www.1millionwomen.com.au
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I joined this group because of wanting to be party of the sustainability movement. So it is disappointing to see animal products used in this recipe…..the growing of animals for food (meat, dairy, eggs) is one of the biggest greenhouse gas problems we have, as everyone by now should know (several UN reports about this). It is very easy to make a vegan banana bread. Just sub butter with a quality, non palm oil margarine, and up the baking powder a bit, and add a 1/2 tsp of baking soda. And yes there is coconut yogurt, (e.g.Coyo- its delicious)
Here’s a recipe: http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/banana-bread-eggless-vegan-recipe/
Hello Val, We really appreciate your comment and do agree – not everyone who is a member of the 1 Million Women community wants to go full vegan. As such we provide sustainable alternatives for all different lifestyles, though we often do post vegan recipes. Thanks for the link, it looks delicious!
Thanks for the reply. I am thinking that given we all want to do our best to support sustainability, it might be a good idea to also give a vegan option for recipes, where possible, with this in mind. A lot of people don’t realise how easy it is to leave animal products out of recipes.
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