Banana Bread and Home-Made Banana Mask

I bought some bananas for my boyfriend but he kept not eating them and they became banana Dalmatians.

Unfortunately I don’t like bananas, but I dislike wasting even more so I decided to use them up and we made banana bread!

One of my favourite bloggers, Philippa from Skinny Latte Strikes Back, very conveniently posted a gluten-free banana bread recipe a few days ago so I thought that was a sign to try a new tasty (and anti-waste) recipe.

Philippa from the SLSB blog has been trying a gluten-free diet, however I didn’t have gluten-free flour so I used ordinary plain flour, I also used 4 bananas as they were small and the recipe required 3 big ones.

Have a look at the SLSB recipe if you would like for the original source and also to find out more about Philippa’s gluten-free challenge, other recipes and healthy living and extremely useful running tips. 🙂

 (Gluten Free) Banana Bread

Ingredients -12 slices

• 75g butter or margarine
• 175g dark brown sugar
• 2 eggs, free range and organic if possible
• 3 large bananas / 4 small ones
• 200g (gluten-free or not) plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder

-Preheat the oven to 180C and grease a  loaf tin. I don’t have one so we actually cooked the banana bread in a cake tin.

-Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy;

-Add the eggs one at a time and incorporate well;

-Add the bananas, mash them and mix everything;

-Stir in the flour and baking powder;

-Pour the mixture into the tin and place in the oven for about 1 hour 15 minutes, until risen and firm. Leave to rest overnight. This banana bread is dense, fudgy and compact, not crumbly.

This recipe is really simple to make, it literally took a few minutes and it was ready to go in the oven, so keep it in mind every time you have bananas to use up.

My boyfriend enjoyed it with large gulps of fresh milk, Philippa recommends trying it with butter or peanut butter on it, or what about with Nutella?

Enjoy!

Waste-Avoiding Banana Bread

 

Fudgy Moist Banana Bread

As the cooking time for this recipe is quite long I made the most of the oven heat by making our dinner with food that needed cooking in the oven so no energy was wasted.

When I went to the London Green Fair on 9th June  I bought a jar of banana and cinnamon spread from The People’s Supermarket stall, which was made with bananas that were just a little too ripe to sell. Maybe that’s another thing to try, adding a little cinnamon to the banana bread mix!

The People’s Supermarket Banana and Cinnamon Spread

J-F from the 222 Million Tons food waste blog also suggested to peel and freeze ripe bananas and then add them to smoothies or blend them on their own for a healthy ice-cream-like dessert.

Bananas, like many other types of food, are great for natural beauty recipes too: on Channel 4’s Super Scrimpers they showed a bride-to-be saving a lot of money by avoiding a costly facial and applying a mashed up banana to her face instead, leaving it on for about 5-10 minutes and then rinsing it off with warm water to leave her skin lovely and soft.

Friends of the Earth’s Pinterest page shows a wide variety of beauty treatments and tips which are both sustainable and affordable, some of this facial recipes really look good enough to eat! 😀

Have you ever tried new recipes to avoid wasting food?

What do you think of home-made beauty treatments?