If you’ve found yourself looking back to banana bread’s heyday at the beginning of 2020 but are stuck with greenish-yellow bananas, this tip could save you days of waiting for your bananas to ripen. No matter the stage of ripeness your bananas are at, this tip will get you to the brown colour needed for baking fluffy, sweet banana bread within an hour.
Nara Smith, wife of the Tumblr-era model Lucky Blue Smith, is known for her softly spoken Instagram videos showing how she makes food for her kids from scratch, wearing glamorous designer evening gowns for her 4.6 million followers. She said: “I always make a variation of banana bread. Today, we’re doing a double chocolate banana bread. I popped my bananas in the oven for a little bit to ripen them further before combining all my wet ingredients and folding in my dry [ingredients].”
The video shows Nara placing several unripe bananas on a baking tray on a sheet of baking parchment. The bananas come out of the oven a deep shade of brown, appearing as though they’ve ripened over a week. Then, when she scoops out the flesh of the banana, it is soft and squishy, like an overripe banana should be. People took to the comments to talk about the simple hack.
Miaalunik commented: “Whattt? I didn’t know you could bake bananas to make them more ripe. Thank you. So helpful. Thank you. I will do this next time for my oat banana pancakes.” Nara replied: “Yes!!” Another commented: “Bananas in the oven is the best hack I’ve learned.” Nara replied: “Yes!!! It truly helps when you’re in a time pinch.”
BBC Good Food recommends baking your bananas for around 30 minutes, at 180C/160C fan/gas 4, but it’s best to keep an eye on them yourself to see how much their colour is changing. It also mentioned that baking the bananas in this way may makes them “marginally sweeter”, but emphasised that this is not technically ripening the bananas, more just softening them.
Nara added that she was adding chocolate to her banana request at her kids’ request: “The kids wanted some chocolate as well, so I added that before transferring it to my baking dish and baking it for about an hour.”
Reddit user Pandada also said baking bananas could improve their taste. They commented: “Roasting them in the oven will ripen the banana, thus making them sweeter. It will also begin to leak banana juice, so make sure you do it with a pan and do it in the peel.”
Chocolate chip banana bread recipe (makes 5 slices)
Ingredients
100g oats, blended
One overripe banana, mashed
Two large eggs
Two tbsp dark chocolate chips
Method
First, preheat the oven to 200C fan/ 425 Fahrenheit/ gas mark 7.
Blend the oats to a flour consistency.
Then, mash the banana.
Put everything into a bowl and stir until combined, then pour the mixture into any size oven-proof dish.
Bake for 15 minutes.
If you are gluten-free, use gluten-free oats for this recipe. If you are vegan, swap the eggs for four tablespoons of yoghurt.
