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My office gets a big order of fruit from Boston Organics every week, which is awesome! But, recently we've found that the bananas are either way too ripe or way too underripe when they arrive. If they're on the riper side, no one eats them and we're left with dozens of brown bananas at the end of the week.

My office manager was kind enough to think of me when we had that dilemma last week. She sent me home with a huge bag of brown bananas to experiment with.

Maybe it was gross that I took these home in a bag on the T but...I had to try some new banana recipes, and when else would I get this many rotten bananas to work with at once?

Before sharing what I made this time around, I'm going to give you my never-fail, go-to, classic banana bread recipe. I don't know how it's so good without any butter in it, but it is. It also cooks at a slightly lower temperature than usual for longer than usual, which I think is part of the secret. It's actually on a note card that I wrote in 6th grade because it's just that classic.

classic banana bread

Laurie is my old friend's mom, so I must have copied this from a recipe card she had at her house. Ignore the typed part - I have no idea what that is! But the handwritten part will NOT let you down, I promise.

Now that that's out in the open, here's what I actually made this time: Banana Nutella Cookies, Cream Cheese-Filled Banana Bread, and Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread.

Banana Nutella Cookies

Recipe from Chef in Training

Ingredients:

1½ cups flour
1 cup sugar
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
¾ cup shortening
2 large mashed ripe bananas
1 egg
1¾ cup oats
¼ cup Nutella

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Mash the bananas with a masher. Add the egg, sugar, and shortening, and use a mixer to combine. Slowly mix in the flour, oats, baking soda, and salt. Once everything is combined, take a knife and slice the Nutella into the batter so that it has thick strips of Nutella in it that aren't fully combined. This makes the cookies look swirly.

Grease a cookie sheet and drop large spoonfuls of batter onto it. Bake for 8 minutes.

The cookies come out cakey and soft, and the banana/nutella flavors are not too overpowering. Here are some friends enjoying them:

They can almost pass as breakfast cookies with the banana and oats - they did when I brought the rest into the office, anyway, because they were pretty much gone before lunch!

The rest of the rotten bananas sat in their bag in the fridge until a few days later, when I started with the breads...

Cream Cheese-Filled Banana Bread

Recipe from Averie Cooks

Ingredients:

BANANA BREAD

1 large egg
½ cup light brown sugar, packed
¼ cup canola/vegetable oil
¼ cup plain greek yogurt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2-3 large bananas)
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt

CREAM CHEESE FILLING

1 large egg
4 ounces softened brick-style cream cheese (lite is okay)
¼ cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Mash the banana with a masher. Add the oil, yogurt, egg, vanilla, and brown sugar. Use a hand mixer to combine. Slowly add the dry ingredients and combine.

In a separate bowl, combine the cream cheese filling ingredients.

Pour about 2/3 of the batter into a greased 9x5 inch pan. Pour the cream cheese filling in evenly and spread if needed. Add the rest of the batter on top. Bake for about 50 minutes.

The cream cheese layer is fun for a change and tastes a little bit like cheesecake! The roomies and I thought it was really good, but it didn't stand a chance compared to the kind I made next...

cinnamon swirl banana bread

Recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction

Ingredients:

BANANA BREAD

2 cups all purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup light brown sugar
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
2 large eggs
1½ cups mashed very ripe banana (about 3-4 bananas)
1/3 cup plain greek yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

CINNAMON SWIRL

¼ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

GLAZE

½ cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon heavy cream

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Mash the bananas with a masher. Add the butter, eggs, greek yogurt, vanilla, and brown sugar. Mix with a hand mixer. Add the rest of the dry ingredients.

Pour half of the batter into a greased 9x5 loaf pan. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture in between, then pour the other half of the batter. Bake for about 45-50 minutes.

Once you've removed the bread from the oven and it's cool, mix up the cream and powdered sugar until it's a fairly thin, glaze-like consistency. Drizzle it over the loaf of bread to get this fabulous result:

This bread is soooo good. It tastes like a cinnamon bun, but as my roommate Kate so eloquently put it, you don't feel like you've sinned after just one bite (because it's made of bananas, after all).

Yum! These were all great experiments with bananas to change it up from the standard bread. What are your favorite ways to use up old bananas?