A celebrity chef has revealed her favourite way to use up overripe bananas – and it sounds mouthwatering.

Nigella Lawson posted her recipe of the day on social media platform X, calling for those with a surplus of bananas that were turning brown.

She shared the recipe for banoffee cheesecake, which she said came from a “handful of mournfully overripe positively unprepossessing bananas”.

Lawson said that this “vulgarly triumphant cha-cha-cha of a cheesecake” is aerated and moussy with a light perfume while being “compellingly heady”.

The recipe, which will serve 10 people, requires: Digestives and unsalted butter for the base, overripe bananas, lemon juice, cream cheese, eggs and light brown sugar for the cheesecake.

You will need unsalted butter, golden syrup and light brown sugar for the toffee sauce.

First, process the Digestives with butter until they make a sandy rubble. Press this into the bottom of a lined springform tin and leave it in the fridge.

Next, process cream cheese with eggs and sugar before adding mashed bananas and lemon juice. Pour this mixture over the chilled base and bake it in a bain-marie for an hour.

Lawson recommended that bakers leave the cream cheese to get to room temperature before adding it to the recipe, saying if it starts cold, it will never cook to the “requisite lusciousness”.

To make the toffee, melt butter with golden syrup and sugar until it bubbles and then becomes a foamy, amber mixture like liquid honeycomb. This will thicken as it cools.

The toffee sauce can be made while the cheesecake is cooking or cooling but needs to be completely cold before putting it on the cheesecake.

Allow the cheesecake to mostly cool on the side before putting it in the fridge uncovered. Make sure to take it out 30 minutes before serving.

The cheesecake can be made up to two days before it is needed. The sauce can be made two to three days ahead unrefrigerated and kept refrigerated for a month.

Other recipes Nigella suggests for overripe bananas include chocolate banana muffins, chocolate tahini banana bread and a banana and butterscotch upside-down tart.

Brown bananas are preferred for cooking, particularly in baking, because as they ripen and turn brown, their starches convert to sugars.

This makes them significantly sweeter and gives them a more intense banana flavour compared to less ripe, yellow bananas. They also contribute to a softer, moister texture in baked goods.