Banana Cake Recipe with Cream Cheese Frosting
A soft, light-crumbed banana sheet cake made with creamed butter and buttermilk, baked in a 9x13 pan and topped with tangy cream cheese frosting. Stays soft for days.
The difference comes down to one technique: the butter and sugar get creamed instead of stirred. That single change is what turns a dense quick bread into something with an actual cake crumb. One 9x13 pan, about 25 minutes of work, and cream cheese frosting on top.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
- The crumb stays soft for three days on the counter, which is unusual for a frosted cake.
- One pan, no layers, no leveling, no crumb coat. It goes straight from the pan to the plate.
- Cream cheese frosting cuts the sweetness of the banana instead of piling more sugar on top of it.
- It uses four very ripe bananas, the kind most people are otherwise stuck turning into a loaf again.
Put the cake in the freezer the moment it comes out of the oven, still in its pan, for 45 minutes. It sounds wrong and it works.
A hot cake sitting on the counter loses moisture the entire time it cools, because steam keeps escaping from the open crumb for the better part of an hour.
Dropping the temperature fast cuts that window short and condenses the steam back into the cake instead of into your kitchen. The result is a noticeably softer crumb on day two and day three.
It also gets the cake cold enough to frost immediately, which saves you the usual two-hour wait. Just set the pan on a folded towel so it is not sitting directly on a freezer shelf.
Read Before You Start
Cream the butter and sugar for a full four minutes. Not one minute, not "until combined." You are beating air into the fat, and those air pockets are what the baking soda expands in the oven. Under-creamed batter gives a heavy, tight crumb that tastes fine and looks like a mistake. The butter should go noticeably paler and increase in volume.
Measure the mashed banana, do not count bananas. You want 1 1/2 cups, about 350 g. Bananas range enormously in size, and an extra half cup of fruit adds liquid and sugar the flour cannot carry. That is where a gummy wet streak along the bottom of the pan comes from. If your four bananas give you more than 1 1/2 cups, save the extra.
Ingredient Deep Dive & Notes
Very ripe bananas: Four medium, yielding 1 1/2 cups mashed. Heavily spotted or fully black peels are exactly right here, unlike in banana pudding or pie where you want firmer fruit. In a cake, the starch has already converted to sugar, so black bananas give more flavor and more sweetness. Mash them with a fork to a lumpy purée rather than blending them smooth, since a few small pieces read as banana in the finished crumb.
Butter: Three quarters cup for the cake, softened to about 65°F. It should dent when pressed but not look greasy. Butter that is too warm will not hold air when creamed, which quietly undoes the entire method.
Buttermilk: Half a cup. It brings acidity, which the baking soda needs to work, and it tenderizes the crumb. No buttermilk on hand? Stir 1 1/2 teaspoons of lemon juice or white vinegar into half a cup of milk and let it sit 10 minutes.
Baking soda and baking powder: One teaspoon of soda, half a teaspoon of powder. The soda handles the acid from the banana and buttermilk. The powder covers the rest. This ratio matters more than it looks, and the Chef's Note explains why.
Eggs: Three large, at room temperature. Cold eggs seize the creamed butter and break the emulsion you just spent four minutes building.
Vanilla extract: Two teaspoons total across cake and frosting. Alcohol-free extract is used here to stay consistent with the rest of the banana recipes on this site.
Cream cheese: Full-fat block cream cheese, 8 ounces, softened. Not the spreadable tub kind, which has extra water and gives you frosting that slides. Check the label if halal status matters to you, since enzyme sources vary between brands.
Do not substitute the buttermilk with plain milk: Removing the acid leaves the baking soda nothing to react with, so the lift drops and you get a slightly soapy aftertaste from unreacted soda.
If your bananas are ripening faster than you can use them, see our Moist Banana Bread and Moist Banana Muffins Recipe.
Equipment Needed
- Light-coloured metal 9x13 pan. Dark metal and glass both run hotter at the edges and will give you dry corners by the time the middle sets.
- Stand mixer or hand mixer. Four minutes of creaming by hand is possible and genuinely unpleasant.
- Fork or potato masher. A blender makes the banana too smooth and the flavour goes flat.
- Offset spatula for the frosting.
- Instant-read thermometer, optional. A fully baked cake reads about 205°F in the centre.
Ingredients for banana cake: ripe bananas, mashed banana, flour, sugar, butter, buttermilk, eggs, cream cheese, and vanilla
Detailed Step-by-Step Cooking Guide
1. Prep the pan and the two base mixtures
2. Cream the butter and sugar for four minutes
Creaming softened butter and sugar in a stand mixer bowl until fluffy and pale
3. Add the eggs, then the banana
4. Alternate the flour and buttermilk
5. Bake 35 to 40 minutes
6. Freeze the cake for 45 minutes
7. Make the frosting and spread it
Spreading thick cream cheese frosting over banana sheet cake in a metal pan with an offset spatula
Getting the Crumb Right
Troubleshooting common banana cake texture, rise, and frosting issues:
Usually too much banana, which adds weight and moisture the structure cannot hold. Measure to 1 1/2 cups. The other causes are opening the oven before 30 minutes and pulling the cake at the first clean-ish skewer.
Excess banana purée sinks as the cake rises and cooks into a wet seam. Measure the mashed banana by volume rather than counting fruit.
The creaming stage was cut short, or the butter was too soft to hold air, or the eggs went in cold and split the mixture.
Too much baking soda relative to the acid available. Measure it level, not heaped.
Overbaked, or the flour was scooped straight from the bag, which can add 20 percent extra. Spoon flour into the cup and level it off.
Tub-style cream cheese, low-fat cream cheese, or butter that was closer to melted than softened. Chill the frosting 20 minutes and re-whip.
Close-up of a square of moist banana cake with swirled cream cheese frosting showing a tender crumb
How to Use This Batter
How to Serve, Store & Reheat
Cut into 15 squares straight from the pan, wiping the knife between cuts. Serve at room temperature rather than fridge-cold, since chilled butter in the crumb tastes dry even when it is not. Twenty minutes out of the fridge is enough.
Because of the cream cheese frosting, refrigerate after the first few hours. Cover and keep up to 4 days. Unfrosted, the cake keeps 3 days at room temperature wrapped well.
Not needed, and not recommended once frosted. If you want a warm square, take the frosting off first and give the cake 10 seconds in the microwave.
Yes, and it freezes better than most frosted cakes. Freeze unfrosted squares or the whole slab, wrapped in plastic then foil, up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the fridge and frost fresh. Frosted squares also freeze if you chill them uncovered for an hour first so the frosting firms up before wrapping.
Plated squares of frosted banana cake with walnuts served with mugs of hot coffee
Dietary Variations & Adaptations
Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg to the dry ingredients. This moves the flavour closer to a spice cake, so add it deliberately rather than by default.
A cup-for-cup gluten-free blend containing xanthan gum works directly in place of the flour. Let the batter rest 15 minutes in the bowl before baking so the starches hydrate, which prevents a gritty crumb.
Use a firm plant-based block butter, and replace the buttermilk with 1/2 cup unsweetened plant milk plus 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice. Dairy-free cream cheese frosting sets softer, so chill it well before spreading.
Baking soda is not a general-purpose lifting agent. It only produces gas when it meets an acid, and in this batter the acid comes from two places: the bananas, which get more acidic as they ripen, and the buttermilk.
One teaspoon is calibrated to roughly that amount of acid. Add more soda hoping for a taller cake and the excess has nothing to react with, so it just sits in the crumb, where it tastes faintly soapy and pushes the pH up.
High pH also speeds up browning reactions, which is why an over-sodaed banana cake comes out darker than expected and sometimes looks slightly grey inside.
The half teaspoon of baking powder in the recipe is there precisely because it carries its own acid and lifts without needing anything from the batter. If you want more rise, cream the butter longer. Do not add soda.
Allergen Notice: This recipe contains milk, eggs and wheat. Substitutions: a gluten-free flour blend for the wheat, and plant-based butter, milk and cream cheese for the dairy. The eggs are structural here and cannot simply be removed. Brand formulations vary and change over time, so read labels yourself when baking for someone with an allergy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Recipe Visual Gallery (6 Full Photos)
Recipe Card & Steps
Ingredients Checklist
Click an item to check it off as you prep
- 2 1/2 cups (313g)all-purpose flour
- 1 tspbaking soda
- 1/2 tspbaking powder
- 1/2 tspfine salt
- 3/4 cup (170g)unsalted butter, softened
- 1 1/2 cups (300g)granulated sugar
- 3 largeeggs, room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups (350g)mashed very ripe banana (about 4 medium bananas)
- 1 tspalcohol-free vanilla extract (for cake)
- 1/2 cup (120ml)buttermilk, room temperature
- 8 oz (225g)full-fat block cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup (113g)unsalted butter, softened (for frosting)
- 3 cups (360g)powdered sugar
- 1 tspalcohol-free vanilla extract (for frosting)
- 1 pinchfine salt (for frosting)
Step-by-Step Instructions
Follow along and mark each step complete as you cook
Preheat oven and prepare pan
Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 9x13 pan and line the base with parchment paper.
Whisk dry ingredients and mash bananas
Whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. In a second bowl, mash the bananas with a fork until lumpy-smooth and measure out 1 1/2 cups (350g).
Cream butter and sugar for 4 minutes
Beat the softened butter and granulated sugar on medium-high for 4 minutes, scraping down twice, until pale and fluffy.
Beat in eggs, banana, and vanilla
Add the eggs one at a time, beating 20 seconds after each. Mix in the mashed banana and vanilla on low. The batter will look curdled at this stage, which is expected.
Alternate flour and buttermilk
Add the flour mixture in three additions and the buttermilk in two, starting and ending with flour, mixing on low just until each disappears. Scrape the bowl and fold the last streaks in by hand.
Bake cake to 205°F
Spread into the pan and level the top. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until the centre springs back, a skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs, and the edges just pull from the pan sides. The centre reads about 205°F (96°C).
Rapid-cool in freezer for 45 minutes
Transfer the pan straight from the oven to the freezer, set on a folded towel, for 45 minutes to trap moisture and rapid-cool.
Beat frosting and spread over cake
Beat the cream cheese and butter until completely smooth, about 2 minutes. Add the powdered sugar in two additions with the vanilla and salt, then beat on medium 1 minute until light. Spread the frosting over the cold cake with an offset spatula and cut into 15 squares.
Recipe Card Notes & Tips
- Measure the banana by volume, not by count. Extra banana causes a sunken centre and a gummy bottom layer.
- Butter, eggs and buttermilk must be at room temperature or the creamed emulsion splits.
- The freezer step is what keeps the crumb soft for days and gets the cake cold enough to frost right away. An hour and a half on a wire rack works if you would rather not use the freezer.
- Two 9-inch rounds bake in 26 to 30 minutes. Cupcakes take 18 to 20 minutes and make about 24.
- Use block cream cheese, not the spreadable tub kind, or the frosting will be loose.
Ratings & Reviews
Leave a Review
Made this recipe? Share your thoughts, tweaks, and honest rating with other home cooks!
Community Reviews (0)
You Might Also Enjoy
More delicious recipes in Desserts.
Classic Butter Cookies Recipe
