Banana Cake

This rich, moist banana cake with cream cheese frosting starts with boxed yellow cake mix as a shortcut.

Servings per Recipe: 10 servings

Calories per Serving: 536

Prep Time: 5

Cook Time: 25

Cooling & frosting time: 2 15

Total Time: 2 45

Add to Collection

4.67 from 6 votes

Ingredients

15 ounce box yellow cake mix
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 bananas, mashed
2 eggs
1 cup water
butter or shortening, as needed to grease pan
flour, as needed to flour greased pan

Frosting:

8 tablespoons softened butter
8 ounces softened cream cheese
1 pound powdered sugar or more as needed
1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

For the cake:

Combine 15 ounce box yellow cake mix, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 3 bananas, 2 eggs, and 1 cup water in a bowl and mix well with a mixer.
Use butter or shortening and flour to grease and flour 2 round cake pans. Pour batter into the pans.
Bake at 350°F for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool on a cooling rack.
Horizontally slice the rounded top from each layer. (Illustration is from a chocolate cake.)
Remove the rounded top. You won't use it in the recipe, so feel free to sample it.

For the frosting:

Combine and mix 8 tablespoons softened butter, 8 ounces softened cream cheese, 1 pound powdered sugar or more as needed, and 1 teaspoon vanilla until frosting reaches a nice spreadable consistency.
Frost cake before serving.

Notes

This cake is easy, but not quick. As with any cake, you'll need to wait for it to cool before you frost it. 2-3 hours is best, but you can speed that up using a cooling rack or the fridge.

The cream cheese and butter will need 30-45 minutes to soften, so don't forget to set those out before you're ready to make your frosting.

Tips:

Cooling the cake. To speed up the cooling process, place the cake pan on a cooling rack after removing it from the oven. The more cool air that can circulate around the pan, the faster the cake will cool. After 15-20 minutes, remove the cake from the pan to the cooling rack.

To avoid breakage, I like to put a cooling rack upside down on top of the cake pan and invert the whole thing onto the cooling rack. If you do not have two cooling racks you can do the same thing with a plate, but I recommend putting parchment paper on the plate so that after inverting, the cake ends up sitting on the parchment paper. Transfer the cake layer from the parchment paper to the cooling rack.

Cutting off the rounded top. To ensure a nice, flat finished cake, cut off the rounded top of each layer. I do this with a long serrated bread knife, gently sawing just the rounded top parallel to the counter surface.

Assembling the cake. For a prettier and perfectly even top, when assembling the cake I place the two shaved sides facing each other at the center of the cake (the means that one layer is right side up and the other is upside down on top of it with a layer of frosting in between the two). This method has the flat, even sides that were the bottom of each layer facing the bottom and top in the final cake assembly.

Nutrition