Banana Peel Cake

Yes, that’s banana PEEL cake, not banana cake. I first learned about this idea when my husband forwarded me an episode of Dateline, an Australian TV news magazine program. In it, a couple is featured in their home made of recycled materials, and Edna Toledo is shown preparing banana skins for a cake. The recipe is featured on Dateline’s site, and an Australian food blogger took an extra step and blogged her version in greater detail with beautiful photos. I googled and found other instances of banana skin cakes and uses for banana skins including curing warts!

I love the idea of using things destined for the garbage, even if I was going to compost the skins anyway. Arguably in most parts of North America, bananas aren’t really sustainable foods, but I choose to buy organic and fair trade bananas to support markets for those products. I would only use organic bananas for something like this since pesticides are more likely to be concentrated in the skins. And of course we don’t really *need* cake, so this would be an occasional treat for me. No way I would make a cake for every four bananas we eat.

With all that in mind, I decided to take Edna’s recipe a step further and veganize it. I have to say during the whole experiment I was sure that this was going to be a disaster, and a waste of ingredients like organic flour, organic sugar, organic canola oil, and more. The story has a happy ending though, and I even made it again!

Here are the steps I took, which are based on Not Quite Nigella’s version.

Day 4 looks almost the same as day 3.

I took four banana peels, cut off the stems, and soaked in a large bowl of water. Each day I changed out the water until it was clear. On the fourth day I decided it was ready, perhaps day 3 would have been fine too. I just left it uncovered on the back burner of my stove and didn’t notice any strong smells.

When ready, strain off the peels one last time. To make a puree, add some water to the peels until you can blend in your food processor or blender. I could only fit about half of the 4 peels at a time, and in each case added a 1/2 cup water. Then strain. When I made this the 2nd time, I also used 4 banana skins but they must have been smaller. I used 1/2 cup water for all and they all fit in the food processor.

pureed banana peel

I have to say this mixture looks pretty awful. Brown doesn’t really quite describe it.  The original instructions say “Strain the mixture to get rid of any hard bits, but retain the puree and the liquid.” This was a bit confusing to me–how was I going to separate hard bits as well as retaining the puree? I wasn’t sure what “hard bits” meant exactly. I could see little chunks all throughout and it seemed like too many to separate. I just left them and carried on.

Now there’s math. The first time I ended up with a cup and a half of puree. Not as easy as doubling a recipe, instead I had to add half as much again of flour, sugar, etc. Also, I wasn’t using self rising flour, so this meant substitutions. Not to mention, I left out the eggs in favor of flax eggs (or flax goo). I ended up winging it a bit, which is not exactly a good idea in baking. So for a cup and a half of puree I used the equivalent of one egg, or 1 tablespoon ground flax whipped with three TB hot water. Plus:

• 3/4 cup oil

• 1- 1/2 t salt

• sugar was more complicated. 3/4 cup plus half that again? I eyeballed it.

• 1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour to which I added 2- 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder and 3/4 teaspoon of salt.

With the 2nd go-round I only had one cup of puree, so everything was much easier to figure out. Both times I only used a tablespoon of yeast.

I used an electric hand mixer to blend the ingredients, and I think this was a good idea, because a few long stringy bits got trapped into the beaters. Maybe these were the aforementioned “hard bits”. I got rid of ’em.

out of the oven

I also had issues with the “baking tin”. Obviously we’re not measuring in metric yet here. I fit all the batter into one 12 x 7.5 x 2 inch rectangular pan on version 1. I don’t have a lot of choice in my kitchen. I don’t have parchment paper so I skipped that, but greased the pan with a little oil. Also I have a convection oven so I notched the temp down a little and took it out after only 30 minutes. When cool, I flipped it out and sliced in half so I could have two layers. (version 2 I had less batter, so used a square 9 x 9 inch pan, and left as a single layer).

Now the syrup step

My first attempt resulted with a little over a cup of liquid strained out. So I added a little over a cup of sugar. I boiled and stirred for 35 minutes and it never got really thick and viscous like the description. I gave up and put the syrup on each of the layers anyway even though it seemed too liquid-y.

Round 1 final product

Probably this was fine as some of it must have soaked into the cake and made it richer. There was a lot of syrup leftover. I’ve saved it to add to oatmeal. For the 2nd try I realized I might not have boiled at a high enough heat. To make things simpler I just used an even 1/2 cup liquid with a 1/2 cup sugar. This time I boiled it more vigorously, and it definitely thickened, within about 20 minutes. Unfortunately I let this cool a bit too long and then it was difficult to spread on the cake. It was almost crumbly, and probably not as visually appealing. Next time I would like to split the difference with the syrup results.

My husband and I were the only guinea pigs on the first cake and we both liked it. The texture to me was quite dense, and overall very rich. My husband said it reminded him of carrot cake. I was worried about hard inedible chunks in the final product, but that wasn’t really in evidence.

Round 2 final product

The second version also went down pretty well at a potluck, where no one really knew the whole backstory. A friend thought it might have had pumpkin, and described it as like a honey cake. She liked it, so overall a success!

We both wondered if there was any nutritional value to peels. Others have wondered too, and there’s even a study. If anyone has any experience with this or decides to make it, please let us hear about it!