I need some help. I bought bananas earlier this week and today I need to make a banana cake and my bananas are still not "very ripe" Do any of you have a trick that will ripen bananas quickly? All yellow and not a very ripe one in the bunch....

Put them in a brown paper bag with a slice of apple.

How long will that take for them to ripen up in the paper bag?

Should take a day or so. Depending on how green those babies are!

I'd call the local grocery and see if they have an overripe ones. The blacker the peel, the better for banana cake. That's when they're really sweet! I wouldn't eat one that way, but it's the only way I bake with them.

Jodie

If you absolutely need to make the cake today, I would recommend smashing the bananas in a shot of espresso (caf or decaf works). I think it really brings out the banana flavor

I needed really ripe bananas once. I went to my local Thornton's (gas station/grocery store.) Those places always have really ripe bananas! Otherwise, the apple/brown bag works within 24 hours depending on how green they are.

Great suggestions, I was always wondering about this myself as every now and then all of the bananas at the store are green . Right, only when you need them ripe/overripe!

Now what I do is, every single time I have overripe bananas (even just one) I just throw them in the freezer. They freeze forever and are naturally wrapped against freezer burn. I have like 10 bananas in there right now, it will be a miracle if I ever make that much banana cake

To speed ripening I tie them in a plastic bag overnight- They'll be yellow by the next day and spotted the day after.

I'm with you, ceshell! I volunteer at a food pantry every week and, when they're ready to dispose of the overripe bananas at the end of the night, I grab them and bring them home. I've taken a lot of teasing for it, and my freezer's full of bananas, but they really come in handy when I need them!!!

I too freeze my over ripe bananas. When I need to make a cake I pull them out of the freezer a couple of hours before I need them. My kids also love them straight out of the freezer into a blender with milk and icecream, makes a great smoothie.

I was inspired by this thread so this morning I made banana-macadamia nut pancakes!! Mmmmm they were sooooo good.

Banana macadamia nut pancakes? That sounds so heavenly! Would you be willing to share a recipe?

Easy! I got it off the net. I use this recipe from Epicurious however I make the following modifications:
1-I don't even bother with the orange butter
2-I use only 1c flour
3-I grind the 1/2c macadamia nuts as fine as possible in a food processor. They become that extra 1/2c flour that I just deleted. However I still fold them in at the end.
4-Because there is less real flour I reduce the buttermilk to 1c
5-Actually that's it! I don't add chopped macs at the end since I've already ground them up, however for extra punch I am sure you could add even more, lightly chopped.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Banana-Macadamia-Pancakes-with-Orange-Butter-107456

Yum-o!

For all fruit that I buy in an unripened, hard state (like pears, avocados, peaches, etc), I put them in a paper bag for 1 to 3 days with 3 or 4 apples. Apples off-gas ethylene which ripens fruit.

I know this doesn't help you today, but if you can let the bananas hang out even just overnight with a couple of apples in a sealed bag, this will help raise the sugar level in the bananas.

I make a banana type pancake. I cut up some bananas and stick in on the griddle, then a little butter, little brown sugar, and sometimes a tiny bit of cinnamon. On top of all that I put some buttermilk pancake batter. It is so good.

Thanks so much for sharing the banana pancake ideas! They all sound so yummy

glad to know I'm not the only one with a freezer full of black bananas!

The rest of my family gives me their old bananas.

You can substitute baby food bananas for the "real" thing if you need to make something and have no ripened bananas on hand...or in the freezer.

put an advocado in a brown paper bag with your bananas on the bench, the advocado omits a certain gas when it is ripe that speeds banana's rippening process