11 Ways to Use up Those Overripe Bananas

Overripe bananas are great for adding moisture and flavor to bread recipes. Banana bread is a tasty treat for breakfast and a relatively healthful dessert, thanks to those potassium-packed bananas. You can even freeze extra loaves to eat later. Just wrap them well, and they should freeze beautifully.

Bananas can take the place of some of the oil in cake recipes, making them lower in fat, without sacrificing any flavor. In fact, adding bananas actually makes a cake taste better. You can also add bananas to buttercream frosting for a full-on sweet banana dessert experience.

Muffins also benefit from the flavor and moisture that bananas give to the recipe, and they make an easy and tasty grab-and-go breakfast or snack. Whip up one of these recipes on the weekend and enjoy easier mornings throughout the workweek.

Dress up basic pancakes or French toast by adding your overripe bananas to the batter. It'll turn them into a more filling, restaurant-quality meal that your whole family is sure to enjoy. If you have trouble getting your kids to eat fruit, this is a sure-fire solution.

This dessert recipe is the best of both worlds as it combines a moist, flavorful cake with a sweet pudding. Ripe bananas are folded into the cake batter, and once baked, the cake is covered with vanilla pudding, a layer of sliced banana, whipped cream, and crushed vanilla wafer cookies.

Healthy enough for breakfast and after-school snacks, these banana oatmeal cookies are an optimal way to use up those ripe bananas while pleasing the whole family. Oatmeal and walnuts pump up the nutrition factor while typical cookie ingredients offer familiar flavor.

Bananas give smoothies and milkshakes a creamy texture and add just enough sweetness than you can often skip adding sugar to the recipe. Freeze the bananas before you toss them in the blender for the best results in these super-quick recipes.

Whip up a quick banana pudding to enjoy with tonight's dinner. This dessert with Southern roots is simple but elegant, with a garnish of sliced bananas and a little (or a lot of) whipped cream.

Bananas make a great companion to chocolate, and this recipe combines the two for wondrous results. Add almonds for an interesting variation.

Banana cream pie is at the top of the list of just about everyone's favorite kinds of pie. It's especially good in the summertime but, really, who cares what season it is. 

If you don't have time to use your ripe bananas before they go completely over the hill, toss them into the freezer with or without the peel and pull them out when you're ready to use them. You can slice them and put them in a freezer bag or freeze in the peel. Banana peels turn black when refrigerated or frozen, but that doesn't mean that the fruit has gone bad.