Banana Butter Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I love this banana butter cake for one simple reason. It’s a superbly moist cake and is absolutely heavenly when paired with cream cheese frosting.

I used fresh ripe banana slices to decorate my banana butter cake. The banana slices were dipped in lemon juice before they were arranged on the cake. This is so that they do not turn color. The last thing you want is for your cake to look unpleasant with banana slices that have changed color. So dipping them in lemon juice helps to keep them in their fresh state. Plus, lemon juice goes pretty well with cream cheese frosting as they are both on the tangy taste side. That’s another plus point.

If you want to make an iced banana cake, cream cheese frosting would make the best icing. I made the frosting with 300 grams of icing sugar and 120 grams of cream cheese and shortening. And this was just nice for the banana butter cake recipe on this post.

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How Much Icing Do You Need For This Banana Butter Cake?

• The amount of icing I used in between the banana cake layers was pretty thin (we love it that way). And so were the sides. If you prefer a more generous amount of icing on your cake, you would need to increase the quantity accordingly. 
• And I chose to use a very simple palette knife swirl pattern to decorate my banana cake. For added deco, I added lemon juice-dipped banana slices randomly on the cake for deco. This was the first time I tried using fresh bananas to decorate a banana cake and the lemon juice really helped the slices keep their pretty yellow shades without turning brown at all.
• Since the cake had fresh banana slices on it, I kept the leftovers in the fridge and 2 days later, the banana slices were still yellow and fresh albeit slightly drier. And the cake, of course, remained moist and delicious as ever.

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How To Make a Banana Butter Cake

Banana butter cake ingredients

These are the ingredients for this simple and super moist banana cake:

Cake batter

• Self-raising flour + baking soda + baking powder + salt
• Soft brown sugar
• Butter
• Egg
• Bananas (mashed)
• Buttermilk
• Vanilla essence

Banana cake decoration

• Cream Cheese Frosting
• Fresh banana slices
• Lemon juice

And this is how you make the banana cake from scratch:

• Start by creaming the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. For the amount in the recipe card below, this should take a good 2 minutes.
• Next, add the eggs, one at a time. Each time an egg is added, the mixture should be beaten until the traces of the egg are no longer visible.
• After the eggs, fold in the dry ingredients. These would be the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. It is best that these are sifted first, or else, use a hand whisk to mix the ingredients well. Fold these in alternately with the buttermilk, start and ending with the dry ingredients.
• Next, add the vanilla essence and finally fold in the mashed bananas.
• Divide the mixture between the prepared cake tins and bake until the cakes have well risen and spring back when lightly pressed on top. You can also use a skewer to test if the cakes are done. Ideally, there should be a few moist crumbs sticking to the skewer. If you see wet batter, continue to let the cakes bake a little further and test again.
• Remove the banana cakes from the oven, let rest in the cake tin for a few minutes and then turn out onto wire racks. Let them cool until they are only slightly warm to the touch. Wrap the cakes in cling wrap and refrigerate.

Banana Cake Decoration

• To decorate the cake, remove them from the fridge. Let them reach to room temperature before removing the cling wrap.
• Level the cake tops and sandwich the layers with cream cheese frosting. Use the remaining frosting to cover the rest of the cake.
• Decorate the cake with thin slices of banana dipped in lemon juice.

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Tips for the Best Banana Butter Cake Ever

Wrap and Refrigerate the Cake After Baking

• This is the trick that makes this cake a super moist banana cake. Refrigerate the cake while it is still warm for a good 12 hours before frosting it. Other than the buttermilk and generous amount of mashed bananas added to the batter, refrigeration is a key factor. That does not mean you can just toss the layers into the fridge and take them out 12 hours later.
• Wrap each of the banana cake layers tightly in cling wrap so that they do not dry out in the refrigerator. Place them without proper wrapping, and you will end up with a very dry banana cake.

Use Fully Ripe Bananas

• This cake being a banana cake has bananas as one of its main ingredients. For the best banana cake, choose fully ripe bananas. Not only are they easier to be mashed, but they taste so much better too.
• The other point I wish to mention about the bananas in this old fashioned, homemade banana cake recipe is the fact that bananas can vary quite substantially in size – at least where I come from. I live in Malaysia, and here, we get a lot of varieties of bananas. And with each variety, the taste differs slightly, and some differ significantly in sizes, sometimes up to 3 times in size. This is why, in my recipe, instead of mentioning the number of bananas to be used, I chose to indicate by their weight. That way, the amount of bananas that get added to the cake can be kept to a perfect consistency every single time.

Use Brown Sugar

• This is a recipe for banana cake with brown sugar. While most banana cakes use plain white castor sugar, I have chosen to use brown sugar. Brown sugar gives this banana cake a tinge of molasses-like taste. This adds more depth to the cake flavor and is definitely a better choice compared to plain white castor sugar. 

Buttermilk Substitute

• This is a banana cake with buttermilk. You can substitute buttermilk with milk and lemon juice. Simply add half teaspoon of lemon juice into 75 ml and let it rest for a few minutes. Use as indicated in the recipe. Remember to double or triple this measurement if you decide to double or triple this moist banana cake recipe.

Avoid Over Baking the Banana Cake

• This is another factor that will affect the moist texture of this homemade banana butter cake. To avoid overbaking, bake in cake tins with the indicated sizes and check for doneness at least 5 to 10 minutes before the baking time is up by inserting a skewer in the center of the cakes.
• If the skewer comes out without any wet batter sticking to it, the cakes are done and should be removed from the oven. Ideally, there should be soft crumbs sticking to the skewer. If the cake is done, the top should spring back when pressed lightly. 

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Banana Butter Cake Recipe

Here is the printable version of my banana cake recipe and while you are at it, don’t miss my recipe notes right below. They contain absolutely useful tips for the making the best banana cake ever!

And that’s my banana butter cake recipe for you.

Here are my other posts and recipes you might want to check out:

How to Level and Layer Cakes

Wedding Cake with Fresh Flowers

Elegant Birthday Cake for Mom

Super Moist Vanilla Cake

Happy Baking 🙂 🙂