Today we are sharing a fantastic scratch Banana Cake with Butter Pecan Cream Cheese Filling Recipe! If you’ve been searching high and low for the PERFECT scratch banana cake recipe, congratulations! You’ve just found it!
I’ve always loved banana bread, and this amazing banana cake recipe captures all of those wonderful flavors, but in the form of soft, ultra moist cake layers.
While this particular banana cake recipe is flavorful enough to enjoy all on it’s own, our Butter Pecan Cream Cheese Filling takes it to an entirely new level of AMAZING!
The combination of banana cake paired with cream cheese and butter pecan is a match made in heaven.
We opted to frost our Banana Cake with luscious cream cheese frosting…mmmmm. I find that there’s NOTHING that doesn’t taste even better with a good slathering of cream cheese frosting.
This Banana Cake is the perfect recipe for fall gatherings or Thanksgiving celebrations, but your family and friends are sure to beg for it all year round! There’s something so comforting about a good old fashioned banana cake, isn’t there?
Have fun experimenting with different frostings and fillings too, like Chocolate or Peanut Butter Buttercream Filling. YUM! This tried and true scratch banana cake recipe is sure to become a favorite.
Banana Cake with Butter Pecan Cream Cheese Filling
Ingredients
Buttered Pecans for Filling:
- 2 cups (190g) chopped pecans
- 3 tablespoons (14g) butter, melted
Cake Ingredients
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour three 8 inch pans
- 2 cups (400g) granulated sugar
- 3 cups (375g) all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon (3g) cinnamon
- 1 1/2 teaspoons (12g) baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon (1g) salt
- 12 tablespoons (170g) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 1 /2 cup mashed bananas (3 bananas)
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 3 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cups (363g) buttermilk
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
Cream Cheese Frosting
- 1 cup (2 sticks, 226g) unsalted butter, softened. (Do not soften in microwave)
- 8 oz (226g) cream cheese (cool. no need to soften)
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
- 4 cups (420g) powdered sugar. add additional if needed
Directions
- Melt 3 tablespoons butter. When melted, add 2 cups chopped pecans and toss into butter to coat. Spread on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 6-8 minutes, stirring several times. Set aside for later.
- FOR THE CAKE: (Makes 9 cups of batter)
- In the mixing bowl, add the dry ingredients, sugar, flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt. Turn on the mixer and blend for 30 seconds to incorporate ingredients
- Add the softened butter to the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl
- In a separate bowl, slice and mash the bananas, add lemon juice, eggs, 2 teaspoons vanilla and buttermilk. Lightly mix these ingredients with a fork to blend
- Slowly add the banana/buttermilk mixture to the dry ingredients beating on medium speed for 1 minute, scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl and beat another minute.
- Pour batter into the prepared pans and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until the cake springs back to the touch and a toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool the cakes 10 minutes on the rack and then turn out.
FOR THE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
- In the bowl of your mixer, blend the butter and cream cheese until just combined. Add vanilla, with mixer on low speed gradually add the powdered sugar. Mix until smooth and combined.
- For the filling, take out 1 1/2 cups of frosting and add 1 cup of the buttered pecans, stir to blend. Spread between the cake layers, extra pecans can be pressed into the filling, if you like. The extra pecans can also be used to decorate the top of the cake. The remaining cream cheese frosting will frost the cake.
- Recipe makes 4 to 4 1/2 cups
- This recipe was inspired by the "Banana Cake IV" recipe on Allrecipes.com
Cake Tip: To increase the moistness of your cake layers, cool another 10 minutes after removing from the oven, and while still very warm, double wrap the individual layers tightly in plastic wrap & freeze for up to a week. (To freeze longer, wrap the plastic-wrapped layers in aluminum foil and freeze for up to 2 months.) Even freezing your cake layers for a few hours will increase the moistness.
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Hi Sarah, If you are not using cream cheese in the frosting the cake will be fine to be left at room temperature. We think buttercream begins to have an “off” taste after 3 days.
I only have two 8 x 2-inch round pans, so I made 12 cupcakes with 1/4 cup batter each and then used the rest of the batter for the two 8 x 2-inch round pans. The two 8 inch layers were only 1 inch thick. Do you know what caused this? I was expecting them to be thicker, like maybe 2 inches.
Hi Jackie, I am sorry you had a problem with the recipe. Are you familiar with using the reverse creaming method of this recipe? Melissa has a video on this if you would like to watch it, here is the link link to mycakeschool.com. Cake layers do not rise quite as high as the conventional mixing method but they should have been approximately 1 3/4 inches high. Method is importing when using reverse creaming. Possibly the dry ingredients were not completely moistened with the butter. It should be mixed until the butter and dry ingredients look like coarse sand. The wet ingredients should also be added slowly to the dry ingredients. The recipe can be rewritten into the conventional mixing method of creaming the butter and sugar if you would prefer that.
Fabulous recipe! I made this cake last night for dessert and was absolutely delicious. Hubby and I couldn’t wait for the coffee to brew this morning so we could indulge in another piece for breakfast. Try this recipe…… you will not regret it!!
Hi Judy, I am thrilled you enjoyed the cake!! I like cake for breakfast too. Thanks so much for posting your thoughts!!
I am making a curious george cake and was wondering what you think of the banana cake with mini chocolate chips frosted with a chocolate buttercream. Do you think a peanut butter buttercream filling would be overkill? Any other flavor recommendations? I am excited to try the cake recipie.
Hi Courtney, I think what you have planned sound delicious, and peanut butter buttercream would be great!
Do i need to use real lemon juice? Or can i use the lemon juice in the bottle. Or can i just leave it out altogether?
Hi Nicole, I am not sure how concentrated the lemon juice from a bottle is, can it be used as an equal exchange? The lemon juice helps to keep the bananas from turning brown, but is not vital to the recipe.
This cake is outstanding (especially the frosting). The buttered pecans are to die for.
Hello, I only have 9″ baking pans at my home. Will the cake turn out the same if I use those or should I make adjustments to the recipe? Thanks!
Hi Taylor, You can use 9 inch pans, the layers won’t be quite at tall but the cake will look fine. Bake at the same temperature but the time will be shorter because of less batter in the pans, keep an eye on them. Hope you will enjoy the cake
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