Rich and moist Banana Coconut Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, perfectly satisfying for mid-morning snack or delicious tea time treat.
What do you do with a bunch of over ripe bananas? You make banana bread or banana cake. This time I decided on a Banana Coconut Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting because I also had a box of cream cheese that needed to be used. Not a problem at all as lightly sweetened cream cheese frosting is my kind of frosting.
I used 3 bananas for the cake and 2 more for smoothies. Do check out my Papaya Banana Smoothie and Kiwi Banana Smoothie. Since the bananas were already quite sweet, there was no need to add any more sugar to the smoothies.
Now, back to this delightful Banana Coconut Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. I wanted it to have a tropical flavor and so I added some coconut to the batter. With just dried unsweetened coconut on hand, I had to rehydrate it with some coconut milk while I prepared the rest of the ingredients.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 cup milk (240ml)
- ½ cup unsweetened dried grated coconut (30g)
- 1¾ cup all-purpose flour (260g)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 3 large ripe bananas
- 1 stick butter (½ cup/113g)
- ½ cup sugar (110g)
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Cream Cheese Frosting
- 8 oz cream cheese (225g)
- 2 tbsp butter (softened) (28g)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ cup powdered sugar / icing sugar (65g)
INSTRUCTIONS
- Combine milk and coconut in a bowl. Let it stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. In a medium sized bowl, combine all-purpose flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Stir to get ingredients well mixed. Peel and mash bananas in another bowl. Grease and flour an 8-inch x 8-inch square cake pan.
- Preheat oven to 350˚F (180°C).
- Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in egg. Add vanilla extract.
- Then pour in half of the coconut mixture, half of the mashed bananas, and half of the flour mixture. Beat on low for 30 seconds. Add the remaining coconut mixture, mashed bananas, and flour mixture. Continue to beat until batter is smooth. This should take 1 to 2 minutes.
- Pour batter into prepared pan.
- Bake for 1 hour or until wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, remove and cool on wire rack.
Cream Cheese Frosting
- Beat together cream cheese, butter, and vanilla extract with wire whisk until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Gradually beat in powdered sugar until smooth and creamy, another 2 more minutes.
- When cake is completely cool, spread frosting all over the cake.
NUTRITION
This Banana Coconut Cake can definitely stand on its own but the frosting made it extra special. As soon as it was ready, I had a slice with my afternoon tea. It was good, really good. 🙂 Do give it a try.
Enjoy…..and have a wonderful day! 😎
it looks yummy!
Thanks Dina! 🙂