An Easy, MOIST Banana Cake Recipe
This banana cake recipe is a result of many, many emails and comments from so many of you writing to tell me how much you enjoyed my banana muffins (see, I didn’t call them the “best” for nothing). A few of you wrote to ask me if it would be possible to bake the muffin recipe into a banana cake, but I had a few reservations. I was worried that the original recipe wouldn’t make the best banana cake, and so I started recipe testing to develop the perfect moist cake. I went through a lot of overripe bananas (and some not-so-ripe ones, in moments of desperation), and finally ended up modifying my pumpkin cake (of all things) to land on this winning banana cake recipe. It’s incredibly soft, fluffy yet moist, and topped with a smooth and creamy version of my popular cream cheese frosting (though to make things extra decadent try it with my brown butter frosting!). Let’s get started:
🧂 Ingredient Overview
My banana cake recipe was carefully and intentionally designed to be sweet, simple, super flavorful, and moist. There are a few key players that help make this happen. For those of you interested in the thought behind the ingredients, let’s discuss:
Bananas. For the best flavor & moistest cake, you should use ripe, spotty, brown bananas. Have some that are looking a little overripe on your counter and starting to attract fruit flies? Grab those. Ideally I prefer mine to be browner than the too-yellow ones shown in the photo above (but my recipe is versatile, so use what you have on hand!). King Arthur has a great guide on choosing the best bananas to use.Butter AND oil. Those of you who have made my vanilla cake or marble cake recipe know that a blend of the two yields a better cake than simply using all butter or all oil. All-butter cakes are more dense and dry than all-oil ones, but using all oil mean you lose that precious buttery flavor. For my banana cake recipe I sought balance, and a blend of the two yielded a perfect moist cake. For the oil, any neutral cooking oil (canola or vegetable are most common) will work.Sugar. Another best-of-both-worlds scenario. Granulated sugar adds sweetness without weighing the cake down too much, while brown sugar adds depth of flavor. Light or dark brown sugar will work, but dark brown sugar makes the cake a bit richer and sweeter.Leavening Agents. Baking powder and baking soda are welcome additions here, they add a bit of lift to the cake to make it perfectly fluffy. Without the two of them we’d have a dense, gummy cake. .Buttermilk. While this plays a role in helping the banana cake to rise a bit when combined with the baking soda, more importantly it adds moisture and a very subtle tangy flavor. You may use my buttermilk substitute if you can’t find buttermilk in stores (or just don’t have any), but the “real” stuff is best here.
This is just an overview of a few of the main ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make the Cake Layer
How to Make Banana Cake Frosting
The other day someone commented to me that they’d eat shoe leather if it had cream cheese frosting on it. That resonated with me 😂. Cream cheese frosting complements everything, and it was a no-brainer that this was the perfect choice for when developing the BEST banana cake recipe. Fortunately, it’s also very easy to make: It took quite a bit of tweaking and testing but I’m very proud to finally be sharing my favorite banana cake recipe with you. If you try it, please leave me a comment letting me know how you liked it! Enjoy! Let’s bake together! Make sure to check out the how-to VIDEO in the recipe card!
More Banana Recipes to Try!
This banana cake recipe was first published March 2018. The recipe remains unchanged, but the content of the post has been updated to include more helpful information as well as a how-to video tutorial.
