This recipe is sponsored by Rodelle, makers of my favorite vanilla products, baking extracts and cocoa powders! Banana bread is great, don’t get me wrong, but there are times when I want to put my brown bananas to use in a slightly more upscale way. Enter banana sheet cake with cream cheese frosting! Many apologies to my small batch banana chocolate muffins, by the way. You guys love my sheet cakes! I use a quarter sheet cake pan, because all I share on this site is smaller-scale recipes for 2-4 people. I use this exact quarter sheet pan, and I love it. Quarter sheet cakes make about 12 slices of cake instead of a 24+ slices. with a regular sheet cake. My pumpkin sheet cake is feeling the love this year, even people who don’t love pumpkin are declaring it the best pumpkin dessert ever. If you didn’t know, I have a Texas Chocolate Quarter Sheet Cake also on the site. If you’re looking for the Texas White Sheet Cake version, it’s in my latest cookbook, Sweet and Simple: Dessert for Two. This banana sheet cake uses 2 large bananas to make 1 cup of smushed bananas. I have a lot of recipes here that use only 1 banana, but I’m actually kind of proud that this one uses 2 whole bananas! It bumps up the banana flavor super high, and it makes for the moistest cake ever.
Flavorings for banana sheet cake:
I use Rodelle’s vanilla bean paste when making this banana sheet cake, because I love the marshmallow-like flavor of vanilla bean paste. Also, I add a dash of freshly grated nutmeg–maybe a scant half-teaspoon, because I think bananas and nutmeg go together really well, but feel free to skip it. Please use whatever spice your Mom uses when she makes banana bread. Sometimes cinnamon is used in banana bread, sometimes not–it’s your call. A lot of the best banana bread recipes rely on sour cream to make a tender loaf, but since we’re making a sheet cake, I use buttermilk. Real deal well-shaken buttermilk. Don’t worry–you can buy it in smaller containers these days, and leftover buttermilk is great in a small batch of cornbread muffins or mashed potatoes. You’re making my cornbread to prep for my Southern Cornbread Dressing, right? It’s difficult to chose a suitable frosting for banana sheet cake, because the options are limitless. The chocolate frosting from the Chocolate Quarter Sheet Cake would be excellent, and I imagine that substitute a few scoops of peanut butter for the butter would be insanely delicious. The simple brown butter frosting from the pumpkin sheet cake would be amazing, too. In the end, I chose a small batch cream cheese frosting, because I have been wanting to share one with you for a while. Plus, you can use this cream cheese frosting on any of the cakes, too!
This recipe uses an egg white only. To browse recipes that use the remaining egg yolk, check my recipe index.
