I don’t like waste, and in the food service industry it is not uncommon to see food go to waste, as not everything always sells before it becomes unsalable.
This was the case with some bananas that were in our fruit basket. They had simply become too ripe. The were headed for the trash can, unless someone wanted them. They did not seem to be in high demand amongst my fellow employees, so I volunteered to find a higher purpose for them than the landfill.
And thus I created this vegan (I still have a whole box of egg replacer!!) banana bread. You could bake it into a load like a typical bread, or you could follow my lead and make petit muffins or mini-donuts.
The bananas in question:
NOTE: I developed this recipe by combining my standby banana bread recipe with a bit of the recipe for the vegan donuts I had, and of course I made sure to omit any animal based products, as I figured I’d keep it straight up vegan since I was using the egg replacer.
RECIPE:
Stuff You’ll Need:
- 4 Ripe Bananas
- 1 and 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- Egg replacer for 2 eggs (I use Ener-G)
- 3 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1. Sift all dry ingredients together. The sifting helps ensure you do not wind up with any clumps in your batter. No one wants to bite into a lump of baking soda! It also helps to distribute the ingredients.
Mix shifted ingredients together.
2. In a separate bowl prepare your egg replacer according to the directions on the box.
Below is a picture of what my egg replacer looked like after it was throughly mixed:
Sort of looks like watery paste. N’est-ce-pas?
3. Add bananas. I like to slice them up before mashing them, just to make it that much more easy. Though they are usually so ripe, it is not very difficult to mash them up.
Now is also a good time to add the vanilla, oil, and applesauce. Why add applesauce? Mostly to add moisture the bread/cake. I also like to use unsweetened applesauce because there is already sugar added in the batter and the ripe bananas also contain a lot of sugar. No more is necessary!
4. Incorporate the dry mixture into the banana mixture until throughly blended.
In my pic below, you can see it is not yet throughly blended:
5. Grease non-stick pans (or any kind of pan) with vegetable oil or something of the sort.
Fill em up!
Pop em in the oven…
And viola!
To make the sugar and nut glaze I toasted some pecans I crushed with the bottom of a glass.
When you are toasting nuts, be sure to watch them very closely, because they can burn very quickly!
As for the glaze I just combined confectioner’s sugar with almond milk and vanilla bean paste. The thing with making a glaze like this, is you just add sugar and whatever liquid you are using until you get the desired consistency. You can probably Google ratios if you want, but I will tell you this: you do not need much liquid! The powdered sugar dissolves with little moisture!
Here are the donuts I packed up and brought to work!
Bananas that would have been thrown out became treats for all (even the vegan) my co-workers to enjoy! And they are a somewhat healthy baked good, so dietary guilt is minimal!
A few female donuts…
(As you can see I ran out of nuts.)
Ciao 4 now!
Madeline
The Hopeful Hestia 