Easy Banana Cake Recipe

This wonderful banana cake recipe is one of those 9″x13″ cake recipes that is perfect for serving a group, or for keeping on hand for a few days. Each cake will serve 12 to 16 people.

I love large cake recipes like this. I like baking but I’m not often a fancy baker. I love cakes that are simple but delicious and this banana cake certainly is both.

Easy cake recipes like our banana cake are just so handy. It’s perfect to serve with tea or coffee and it makes a wonderful snack cake recipe.

Banana Cake VS Banana Bread

Most of us have enjoyed banana bread many times over the years, but banana cake is made less often.

So what’s the difference? Banana cake is lighter in texture than a traditional banana bread or loaf. Banana bread is delicious and I make it often, but this banana cake recipe is nicer if you want a lighter dessert – a true cake.

Both banana cake and banana bread are great ways to use up bananas that have passed their peak for eating fresh. The bananas are still good to eat. It’s just that most of us prefer them a little less ripe, so sometimes good bananas go to waste.

This easy banana cake recipe is a wonderful way to use up those overripe bananas. In fact, banana cake is best made with overripe bananas, those bananas with lots of brown spots on the skin that most of us don’t want to eat any more because they can be mushy. Well, get out the baking pans because those overripe bananas are perfect for banana cake, banana bread, or banana muffins.

So how ripe should the bananas be?

How Ripe is too Ripe?

When a banana cake, banana muffin or banana bread recipe calls for bananas, they don’t mean the light yellow bananas we usually slice on to our cereal. When bananas are used in baking they need to be what we usually think of as overripe. That means bananas that have brown spots on them. Not rotten bananas – we want healthy food, not rot. Just very ripe, with brown spots on the peel, just like the image below.

The bananas we use in baking need to be overripe because that what makes them sweeter and softer. Soft overripe bananas mash nicely with no hard chunks left in the mash and that’s what we need to make this yummy cake.

This cake recipe is so easy to put together. This is my kind of baking, simple but delicious. Just mix together a few simple ingredients, pour it into the pan and bake. It’s that simple.

Banana Cake Recipe Ingredients

My easy banana cake recipe is one of those great 9×13 cake recipes that you will want to keep handy. Most of the ingredients you probably have on hand in your refrigerator all the time – eggs, flour butter, sugar, vanilla and, of course, bananas.

This recipe uses 4 very ripe bananas. (See above for what you need to be looking for in terms of how ripe is ripe enough).

What I love about this recipe is that it has the added bonus of a bit of sour cream. Sour cream gives your cake moisture and tenderness and keeps the batter from being overly sweet. That addition alone makes this cake really stand out.

Buttermilk is often used in cake recipes for the same reason. It lightens up the batter. In this case the recipe calls for sour cream and it’s a perfect ingredient for this 9″x13″ easy cake recipe.

The Steps in Making Banana Cake

Always begin by preheating your oven. By the time your cake batter is ready to go into the baking pan, the oven is hot and ready to go.

Making this banana cake is really easy. You will need one larger bowl for the wet ingredients, plus two smaller bowls.

The first step is to mix together all of the wet ingredients.

Usually you have to cream the butter and sugar together, but not in this simple cake recipe. Melt the butter, but don’t let it boil, just melt. Add it to a bowl then add in the sugar, mix and add the eggs, vanilla and the mashed bananas. Mix everything together and set the wet ingredients aside.

The next step is to mix the baking soda into the sour cream in a small bowl. Set this bowl aside too.

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a third bowl – the flour, salt and baking powder.

Add 1/2 of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, then 1/2 of the sour cream mixture, then the rest of the flour mix and the rest of the sour cream. Make sure it is all well blended.

That’s it. Just pour the batter into the prepared pan. If you want a pretty presentation, slice another banana and arrange the pieces on the top of the cake just as it’s ready to go into the oven, as you can see in the image above. It’s really optional. The cake is just as good without the extra banana on top. This is what the cake looks like made without the banana slices on top.

If you love this banana cake look here for our banana cupcakes with orange glaze. They will be a big hit too.

Browse all of our easy dessert recipes here.

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