The banana bread’s sweeter cousin, banana cake is the perfect way to use up those overripe bananas you’ve had sitting in your fruit bowl for too long. Bananas became a popular ingredient in bakery in America in the 1930s, when banana bread appeared for the first time in Pilbury’s Balanced Recipes cookbook, a staple in most American homes. Banana cake, made with self-raising flour instead of baking powder, followed shortly afterwards.

Go bananas for this perfect banana cake recipe
Course: BakingCuisine: DessertsDifficulty: Medium4
servings20
minutes35
minutesIngredients
150 g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
125 g butter
1 egg beaten
2 overripe bananas (the blacker, the better!)
190 g self-raising flour
60 ml milk
Instructions
- First up, preheat your oven to 170 Celsius degrees (150 Celsius degrees with fan)
- Then, grease and line a loaf tin with baking paper and place to one side.
- Next, melt your butter, vanilla extract and sugar on the hob on a medium heat, stirring regularly.
- While the other ingredients are melting, mash your bananas to a pulp, making sure there are no lumps.
- Once everything is melted, take your pan off the heat and mix in the bananas until the mixture is smooth. You might need to use a whisk.
- Add your egg, and mix everything together well.
- Now sift in your flour, getting as much air into the mixture as possible, and stir in your milk, being careful not to knock the air out by beating too hard.
- Once the mixture is smooth, pour into your prepared tin and sprinkle with a little Demerara sugar if you have it. This will give your cake a lovely crunchy topping.
- Finally, bake in your preheated oven for around 35 minutes, or until a skewer comes clean. If you’re using a fan oven, this might be slightly earlier.

Ways to mix up your banana bread
If you want to mix up your banana cake recipes, there are few other things you can do to really make it stand out from the rest. If you want something a little richer, then you can make the banana cake with a mixture of caster sugar and dark brown sugar. Or, for a little sourness, you can use buttermilk instead of normal milk.

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