Tag Archives: Banana Cake

Banana Bundt with Cream Cheese Swirl

My name is Cindy and I have a Bundt pan addiction. Is there anything more beautiful than a Bundt Cake? It does all the work for you. Somehow, over the years, I have amassed quite a collection of Bundt pans. I have this one, this one, this one, this one, these and these. I have resisted buying these, but we all know it’s only a matter of time.

Bake from Scratch magazine founder, Brian Hart Hoffman, recently released The Bundt Collection Cookbook, 128 gorgeous and delicious ways for Bundt aficionados to show off their baking prowess.

I started off with this Banana beauty. When you slice the cake you reveal a gorgeous cream cheese swirl. The tang of the cream cheese really complements the sweet bananas. It’s a classic combo.

Once the cake is cooled, you brush it with melted butter and sprinkle coarse sanding sugar all over the top and sides. It glistens like a jewel.

Since I have baked more than a few Bundt cakes in my life. I’d like to offer a few pointers for success:

  1. To avoid every Bundt user’s worst nightmare, spray the pan very well with Baker’s Joy, Pam with Flour, or other spray that includes flour.
  2. Dense batters, like pound cake and coffee cake are best for a Bundt pan. A light chiffon or sponge cake is not a good option for this pan.
  3. Be patient when you bake this. It takes a while. Use the wooden skewer test. If the skewer comes out sticky or covered in batter, it’s not ready. If there are just a few crumbs clinging to it, that’s fine. Better still, an instant read thermometer, registering 200°F is a foolproof test.
  4. Let the cake rest on a wire rack for at least 15-20 minutes before turning cake out of the pan. You might need to give the pan a gentle bang to help loosen the cake and release.
  5. Let the cake cool entirely before glazing or icing it.
  6. Any leftover cake freezes beautifully. I slice it, wrap each slice in plastic wrap and then put them in a freezer bag.

Banana Crunch Cake

I have never really loved my birthday. It’s not an aversion to aging, I’m perfectly fine with that. I just dislike having any attention focused on me. I especially hate having “Happy Birthday” sung to me. All three of my children also really dislike having it sung to them. We’re a family of silent cake eaters, except for my husband, who enjoys a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday, so we indulge him on his birthday.

I decided that it’s really sad to dislike your birthday, so a few years ago I decided to focus on embracing the day by spending it doing something I really love. I began baking my own birthday cake. Some might think it’s pitiful to have to bake your own cake, but this way, I get exactly what I want.

I usually spend several days researching and thinking about what kind of cake I want to create. These are not simple cakes. The first birthday cake I made for myself was “Pam’s Carrot Cake.” Subsequent years brought more complex cakes. There was the epic Brown Butter Salted Caramel Crunch Cake of 2016 and legendary (in our family, at least) Caramel Honeycomb Birthday Cake of 2017.

The crunch in this cake comes from toffee. I made my own toffee from sugar, corn syrup, cream and butter. If you’re pressed for time, you could substitute Skor bits, but making my own was part of my birthday therapy.



The banana cake in this recipe is not a light and fluffy sponge. It’s dense and super moist thanks to ripe bananas and sour cream. My frosting of choice was a Milk Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream. If you have never made a meringue based buttercream, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. It is less sweet than a typical American buttercream, which is made from icing sugar and butter. If you’re curious to learn more, this is an excellent primer on the various types of buttercream.

I made the toffee crunch, buttercream and cake layers the day before my birthday, and spent most of my birthday assembling, styling, videoing and photographing the assembly. In short, a glorious day of creative fulfillment.

I piped the buttercream on in gentle waves, using a leaf tip (Wilton #104). I have been excited to try this technique ever since I first saw it in Tessa Huff’s glorious new book, “Icing on the Cake.”


Banana Coconut Cream Cake

When I was growing up, our family’s favourite dessert was Sara Lee Banana Cake. We never even bothered defrosting it. Just ate it straight from the freezer. Someone, not mentioning any names here, would even pick off the frozen cream cheese frosting and leave the cake bare naked and shivering in the freezer. I have since graduated to homemade banana bread and cake, but I never could quite get the texture to be the same as Sara Lee.

My favourite dessert as an adult is Coconut Cream Pie. Not just any coconut cream pie. The very best is in Toronto, at Sacaramouche Restaurant. I got this idea in my head of doing a mashup of these two desserts. I’d fill three layers of banana cake with coconut cream pie filling and then smother the whole thing in cream cheese frosting.

The first time I attempted this concoction, the cake batter curdled in the oven. I’m not quite sure what happened. It ended up in the garbage. The second attempt resulted in cake layers that were too soft and fell apart when I tried to stack them. It tasted good but looked like crap. And then I remembered this banana cake and tried again.

This is now my new favourite dessert. The banana cake is moist, but dense enough to handle the weight of the silky coconut cream pie filling. The tangy cream cheese frosting balances all the sweetness from the cake and filling. It’s perfection.


Start with the coconut cream pie filling, as it needs to chill in the fridge for several hours. You could even make this a day or two in advance. Basically you are making a coconut custard.
As long as you remember to temper the egg yolks, all will turn out perfectly. This involves pouring a little bit of the hot milk-coconut milk mixture into the egg yolk-sugar mixture, before putting it back on the stove to thicken.
Make sure your bananas are very ripe before mashing.
I baked the cake in three 6-inch pans for a tall majestic cake. You could also bake it in three 8-inch pans for a shorter but equally delicious cake.
Assembly of the cake is where you need to take some care. This cake is very much like a teenager. You need to set boundaries or she will run amuck! Before spreading the coconut cream pie filling on the layer, pipe a border of cream cheese frosting. This will contain the filling and prevent it from oozing out of the side of your cake.

Click here to print recipe for Banana Coconut Cream Cake.

Banana Fudge Chocolate Cake

Cake with unlit candlesWe’re not into big, full-on birthday celebrations in our house. We’re just not the partying kind of family. 4/5 of us fall squarely into introvert territory. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as I have recently learned from a wonderful book called The Introvert Advantage.

So while we do celebrate our birthdays without much fanfare, the one thing I do insist on is a homemade birthday cake. Even if I do have to bake my own cake. Everyone in our family has their favourites. My oldest son and husband always request Almond Berry Shortbread Cake, my youngest son will accept anything with chocolate, see here, here, here, and here.

My daughter usually requests Carrot Cake with Lemon Curd Filling. However, this year when I asked her what kind of cake she wanted for her August birthday, she told me I could surprise her and make anything I wanted. She knows I love to bake new things so I’ll have fresh material for the blog. What a great daughter.

Anything I want? I was a little overwhelmed with such wide parameters. Sometimes less choice is a good thing. I turned to one of my favourite baking books for inspiration. Bobbette and Belle is filled with classic baked goods with a unique twist.

I decided on baking the Banana Chocolate Fudge Cake since my daughter loves chocolate very much. I seem to recall that her first word was chocolate. If you plan to bake this cake, and you really should, plan on baking it over 2 days to allow yourself time to enjoy the process. There are 4 component parts to the recipe.Cake and presentThere are 3 layers of dense super-moist banana cake. Note that you will require 7 ripe bananas to make this! Most banana cake recipes call for 3 ripe bananas, so we are veering into deep banana territory here.Cake with slice removed 2The 3 layers are sandwiched with a deep dark chocolate fudge frosting. Then, the whole thing is covered in a silky light chocolate buttercream. Finally, the cake is topped with a chocolate glaze that drips ever so artfully down the sides of the cake.

I made the fudge frosting and buttercream on day one and the cake layers and glaze on day two. Here’s a video showing how the whole thing was assembled.

This cake was met with rave review from everyone who got to try it.Cake with slice removed

A very happy birthday indeed!!

slice with lit candle

Click here to print recipe for Banana Chocolate Fudge Cake.

slice laying on its side

Hummingbird Cake

One SliceI made this cake to celebrate my father’s 90th birthday. Sadly, he will have to enjoy this cake vicariously, from his perch in heaven, as he died in 1999. Some may find this a bit macabre, but those who knew my dad understand that enjoying life vicariously, through others, was ingrained in his being. He got great pleasure and joy from other people’s good fortune.one slice 2Hummingbird cake is a classic Southern dessert, with Jamaican roots. The glorious trifecta of banana, pineapple and pecans meld into a moist dense cake that, once filled and frosted with a cream cheese frosting, could drive a sane person just a tad crazy. I added some unsweetened coconut to the batter because, well, coconut! All you coconut haters can leave it out. You won’t hurt my feelings. I used coconut flakes, but for a less chunky texture, you could use shredded coconut.

This cake recipe is adapted from Bobbette and Belle’s recipe for Hummingbird cupcakes.  ready to bakeNo one is quite sure how this cake got it’s moniker. Some theorize that because the cake is so sweet, loaded with sugar and fruit, that it would naturally attract hummingbirds. Others posit that the cake is so delicious, it makes people hum with happiness, like a bird.cakes coolingassembling cake 1assembling cake 2To decorate the cake I used a #8 Wilton tip to pipe a string of “pearls” around the top and bottom of the cake. I tied some gold ribbon around wooden skewers to create little flags and staggered the heights in the cake.cake and milk

Click here to print recipe for Hummingbird Cake.

Two slices