Did you know you can eat banana peels? I didn’t either, until recently. I immediately started to think about what I could make with them. My mind went straight to sweets, and after some trial and error, I decided this banana peel cacao cake recipe was good enough to share with you.
When you are lucky enough to be able to grow your own bananas like Mark, (or you buy a lot of bananas because you love them, like we do) you get a lot of banana peels too. Whether I buy it or grow it, I’m always trying to make the most out of my produce- especially with rising food costs these days… yikes! No surprise then, that I jumped at the chance to get another use out of the banana peels.
Normally I use banana peels in a different way; to make a light liquid fertiliser for my plants. I do this by cutting them up and soaking them in water for 1 to 3 days. After that, I water my plants with the banana-water and throw the peels into the compost. But now I know that banana peels are edible, I devised this divine banana peel cacao cake instead.
The banana peels themselves aren’t good to eat as is, but when incorporated into a recipe like this one, they lose the slightly bitter pithy-ness that makes them unpalatable when raw. And you don’t taste any banana flavour in this cake at all.
You need five banana peels for this recipe, so just top and tail the peels and save them in a baggy in the fridge until you have enough. It is best to use organic banana peels for this recipe, as non organic bananas are often heavily sprayed.
So let’s get into the kitchen and make this banana peel cacao cake!
Go into the kitchen and gather your ingredients. You can see my banana peels got really brown, because they have been in the fridge for four days. But that doesn’t matter at all. They are still good and you can still use them just fine.
Put the dry ingredients into a bowl and the wet into the blender. Blend the wet ingredients to a smooth paste, then stir into the dry ingredients.
Put the batter into a greased up baking dish and bake for about 40 minutes at 180 degrees celcius.
Nicely baked, fluffy and crumbly banana peel cacao cake
Banana Peel Cacao Cake
Equipment
- blender or food processor
- bowl
- Spatula
- Spoon
- Measuring cup
- Cake tin/baking dish
Ingredients
- 5 banana peels discard the top and tail and cut peel into pieces
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup sugar I used palm sugar
- 1 cup vegetable oil or melted butter or melted coconut oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ cup cacao powder
- 1 ¾ cup flour I used 1 cup buckwheat flour and ¾ cup oatmeal flour
- 1 heaped tsp baking soda
- 1 ¼ tsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 pinch salt
Instructions
- Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees celcius convection setting (365F)
- Add the cut-up banana peels to the blender, together with the sugar, vanilla extract, vinegar, salt, eggs and vegetable oil. Blend to a very fine consistency
- Add in the rest of the ingredients to a bowl, stir to combine them. Add in the blended mixture and stir that together well
- Grease the baking dish with some butter, veg oil or coconut oil then pour the batter in
- Smooth the batter out and bake for about 40 to 45 minutes
- Put the cake on a baking rack to cool. Cut into pieces and eat as is or top with some butter, coconut oil or (homemade) nutellaEnjoy!
