Who knew that if you needed to, you could ripen bananas this quickly.

EASY & DELISH | Several weeks ago, I was invited to a dinner party and asked to supply dessert. I wanted to take along Caren McSherry’s no-brainer five-minute banana ice cream (CLICK HERE for the recipe) but did not have overripe bananas on hand, could not find any at the grocery store and lacked the (several days) time it takes to force-ripen fresh bananas in a brown bag.

I was explaining this predicament to my foodie friend Anne when she suggested I speed-ripen my bananas by popping them the oven. “This trick is so easy,” she told me. “And oven-ripened bananas taste just as sweet as ones that have been left to over ripen on their own. I love they way they look, too. Their transformation is so radical it makes me think of magic.”

Here’s how Anne ripens bananas, and what yellow bananas look like after they’ve been in the oven. Read more