My oldest wanted banana cake for her birthday. She decided this MONTHS in advance, and never wavered from it. So, we whipped this up. It’s a heavier cake, a bit more like pound cake, but it’s really, really tasty! I made it as a sheet cake for her birthday (with peanut butter frosting–I’ll share that recipe later!) and it was a big hit. It’s tasty the day you make it, but it’s actually even better the next day, when the flavors have blended more.

As with any cake, you can make it in a different shape than I chose, but I thought this well-suited to the sheet cake format. Careful making it as cupcakes, though–I suspect it’ll be mistaken for a banana muffin then :-). Though I suppose that’s not a bad thing… :-P.

Banana Cake

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 sticks butter (3/4 cup), at room temperature
• 1/2 cup Truvia (or off-brand of the same)
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Directions:

1.  Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Mash the banana thoroughly and mix in the lemon juice.

2. Mix the flour, baking soda, salt, and Truvia together in a small mixing bowl.

3. Cream together the butter and Truvia in a stand mixer or in a large mixing bowl (by hand or with an electric hand mixer). Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well.

4. Add the dry mixture to the butter mixture slowly, alternating with the buttermilk, until both are gone. Mix well until fully combined.

5. Add the mashed banana mixture and mix well.

6. Pour into a sheet cake pan or 9×13 pan and bake about one hour in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Frost with your choice of frosting after cooling–I’ll be posting the natural-sugars peanut butter frosting I made later and I’ll add a link here then, but you could do a standard buttercream or chocolate buttercream frosting if you don’t have to avoid the powdered sugar and that’d be tasty too!