Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting | Best Banana Cake Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why is my banana cake not moist? ›

If you use a yellow (or even worse a green) banana in your cake not only will it not have as much flavour it will be significantly drier. It's important to make sure your bananas are well mashed. If they aren't broken down well enough less moisture is released from the fruit, effecting the texture of your cake.

Too much baking soda in banana bread will inevitably lead to too much browning. Baking soda will increase the pH of your banana bread batter, making it more basic or alkaline. At higher pH, Maillard browning reactions occur, leading to a darker colour much faster.

Banana Cake Ingredients

For the cake: bananas, lemon juice, all-purpose flour, baking soda, salt, white sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla extract, and buttermilk.

To store: Store leftovers covered in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. The best banana cake can also be wrapped in plastic wrap or placed in an airtight container and frozen for up to 2 months!

This means it's tempting to toss all your bananas into the mix when you're ready to bake, to avoid food waste. But if you add too much of the fruit into your batter, your bread could turn out mushy, heavy, and wet. So, it's a good idea to always stick to the recipe's instructions. But why is this such a problem?

While it's okay if the banana peel is dark brown or even black, if the inside is too, then the fruit is beyond ripe and now on its way to rotten. Another sign that bananas have gone bad is if they start leaking any fluids. When in doubt, just toss the bananas out.

Another problem if your oven temperature is too low is your cake is not going to bake in the required time as stated in the recipe. So for example, if your cake should take 30 minutes to cook, it's not going to be cooked in those 30 minutes if the oven temperature is too low.

Using too much butter makes for a heavier cake with less banana flavor. Using double the amount of butter that the recipe called for left me with a loaf that was dry on the outside and moist on the inside. The coloring was almost identical to that of the loaf made with too little butter.

As a trained pastry chef, I'm used to making banana cakes with butter, but for this banana cake, I opted for all-oil, and it made a DELICIOUS difference. It's soft and smooth with a melt-in-your-mouth moist crumb. Just like this banana bread made with oil. The cream cheese frosting is a bonus!

Long ago, bakers learned that the addition of vinegar to baked goods helped them rise and kept the baked goods fluffy and moist. Apparently, the vinegar reacts with the baking soda in a recipe to produce carbon dioxide, a gas that enhances the rise.

What are the black strings in banana cake? ›

Short Answer: The alkaline environment of a batter with baking soda results in discoloration of the pulp fibers. Short Answer: The alkaline environment of a batter with baking soda results in discoloration of the pulp fibers.

In much smaller quantities, the baking soda still has a chemical reaction with acid. Low and behold the acidic component is in bananas, so any excess baking soda that doesn't help the banana bread rise will react, hence green or blue banana bread slices the next day.

Banana cake can be stored in its pan with a lid on it on the counter. Oh, but can banana cake be refrigerated? Sure! In fact, I kind of like to store it like that to help keep it longer and more moist, just be sure to let it sit out for a few minutes before serving so it's not freezing cold.

When your banana bread appears dry after baking, place a coat of simple syrup on top to prevent it from going dry. You can use a simple syrup with half water and half can moisten, and it will be a dry sponge if a thin coating is added to it.

When it comes to banana bread, moisture is key, and the ratio of flour to banana makes all the difference in getting the perfect banana bread consistency. If you use too much flour, you'll end up with really dry banana bread, and If you don't use enough flour, your banana bread will be way too wet.

What to do if you've used too many bananas. If you must add an extra banana into your batter, there are ways to prevent the bread from turning mushy. Using a lot of bananas adds excess moisture, and there are two ways to get rid of it. You could either add more flour or increase the baking time.

If you have too much flour in a recipe and not enough fat, like butter or oil, your cake is going to be dry and hard. For best results, I would encourage you to use a scale when baking, but if you don't have a scale, then just make sure you're using measuring cups correctly.