Don't trash those overripe bananas just yet — you can freeze them and make delicious baked goods without compromising the finished product. In fact, when you use the frozen fruit, making banana bread [1] may be easier to whip up than ever.

A bunch of bananas can take up to five days to fully ripen [2] on the counter. Once ripe, you can move them to the fridge for an additional five to seven days before they start to get a little too ripe [3] for comfort. When that happens, you can freeze them [4] for up to three months in several ways. It's best to remove the peel beforehand, as peeling an already-frozen banana can be difficult and somewhat gross — the peels turn black, and as the bananas thaw, they get pretty squishy. Instead it's easier to peel the bananas you want to save and store them whole in a labeled freezer-safe baggie. If you plan to make more smoothies [5] than baked goods, it's possible to slice up the bananas before freezing for easy measuring. Just make sure you freeze them in a single layer on a baking sheet before moving them to a container for storage. This way, the individual slices won't stick together.

What do you do once you've frozen your bananas? There are tons of recipes for banana bread [6] out there that work just as well with frozen bananas. There are also plenty of vegan recipes [7] that rely on banana instead of egg, and frozen fruit works well in those too. In fact, thawing out a frozen banana can result in a very squishy substance that's much easier to incorporate with dry goods. It is advisable, though, to read through a recipe beforehand and make sure it doesn't explicitly require fresh bananas. Good news, though: most of them won't! And once you've found the perfect recipe — like this one [8] — just thaw out your bananas in a bowl at room temperature and they'll be ready in no time.