Bananas can go from yellow with brown spots to completely black and can still be eaten and used in baking. In fact, black bananas are some of the best for making banana bread because they have developed more sugar as they settle and therefore taste sweeter. They can also be wetter, which is perfect for baked goods. Riper bananas (with brown spots or even completely brown) are absolutely PERFECT for making banana bread.
They have great sweetness and a very soft consistency that is ideal for baking. And remember, if you have too many brown bananas that you can't consume quickly, you can always peel them and put them in the freezer. Bananas freeze really well and work great in any banana bread recipe. Because of their flavor profile, red bananas are great ingredients for baking sweet and semi-sweet recipes.
Try making this best chocolate and banana birthday cake with red bananas or this 5-ingredient sugar-free banana and berry bread. These bananas may be too ripe for your cereal, but they're just starting to do their best to make banana bread. Pisang Raja bananas, popular in Indonesia, are dense and creamy and are known as “dwarf banana plants”, as they only reach eight to 10 feet when ripe (by comparison, Cavendish can reach up to 25 feet tall). These bananas have a sweet, firm, orange flesh that withstands frying, making them excellent candidates for banana fritters.
Follow these guidelines if you buy bananas for immediate use, but if you have time for the bananas to ripen to the desired point, you can buy them when they are still green or underripe and will ripen at home when you store them at room temperature. You can use frozen bananas in recipes such as salads and fruit smoothies, or you can defrost them and use them in breads, pastries and muffins. Letting the bananas ripen for longer, until the skin is almost golden brown and the fruit falls apart when peeled, will give the bread an even stronger banana flavor. If you must use fresh green bananas, you'll need to increase the amount of sugar in the banana bread recipe.
So if you want to make a banana bread from another world, it's important that you use the “right” bananas. We recommend cutting Cavendish bananas into slices and using them as a topping for oatmeal, baking them for healthy banana bread, using them as a base for good cream, or eating them directly without the peel. When you're ready to use frozen bananas, let them sit at room temperature to thaw before making banana bread. If you really want to make banana bread but don't have ripe bananas, you can speed up the ripening process using one of these two methods.
Replace them with Cavendish bananas in this recipe for chocolate and banana squares, or in this recipe for apple and banana breakfast tortillas, which really highlights their intense aroma. But the most important flavor in banana bread, the one that will make or break the bread, is (no surprise) the banana. Apple bananas, named after the French missionary Claude Letoundal from India, were introduced to the Philippines by Letoundal, and are still the most popular bananas grown there today.
