Bananas Foster Cake

This Bananas Foster Cake transforms a classic dessert into a delicious layer cake! Banana cake layers, bananas foster filling, and vanilla bean buttercream.

Is it weird to make a cake based on a dessert you’ve never had? It’s a little weird. At least, I don’t think I’ve ever had it. Bananas Foster is not common in this neck of the woods, much to my dismay.

This Bananas Foster Cake was another idea from Ryan (I don’t think he’s ever had the dessert either). Who am I to turn down making a cake that basically consists of bananas, booze, and caramel? 

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What is Bananas Foster?

Bananas Foster is a dessert consisting of banana halves sautéed in a rum caramel sauce served over vanilla ice cream. The dessert was created by Brennan’s restaurant in New Orleans in 1951. You can read more about its origin here.

Sounds amazing, right?? The combination of flavors is delicious and it’s super easy to make at home. I think my cake version does the classic dessert justice. 

How do you make this Bananas Foster Cake?

I used my favorite banana cake recipe as a base for this with a bit of added cinnamon. For the filling, I mostly followed the traditional Bananas Foster recipe here, except that I didn’t flambé it. 

If you’ve been following Liv for Cake for a while, you know that I cannot be trusted with a kitchen torch (among other things). Attempting to flambé the sauce was just a recipe for disaster so I opted not to (aka I chickened out). I don’t mind a bit of alcohol in my desserts, so it worked just fine for me. 

You’ll need to cool the sauce and bananas completely before using in the cake. I actually let mine sit overnight in the fridge. This is not necessary but if you want to space out your baking you can do it. Your sauce may thicken quite a bit though and you may need to warm it up again. Mine actually thickened so much that I had to remake it the next day (I had cooked it too long, recipe adjusted for proper times).

I actually had to remake the sauce FOUR times because something kept going wrong (aka I was rushing as usual and cooking the sauce over a much higher heat than I should have). I’ll save you the dramatics, but the sauce was either too thick, or crystallized badly, or turned into a fudge. 

I wanted to use the sauce as a type of caramel drip on the cake, but gave up after the 4th attempt. I used the sauce on the cake layers and drizzled it on the filling as I was stacking the cake. As such you get a bit of a plain looking cake with some pizazz on the inside.

Vanilla Bean Frosting

I wanted flecks of vanilla bean in the frosting to try to emulate the homemade vanilla ice cream that would come with Bananas Foster.

I used my favorite vanilla bean paste to do this, but you could use the seeds scraped out of a vanilla bean or just regular old vanilla if that’s all you have lying around. 

This frosting tastes JUST like the very best vanilla ice cream you’ve ever had.

How did you decorate this Banana Cake?

I kept the decoration fairly simple, except that I did want to add a drip with the sauce but that didn’t quite work out as I mentioned above.

After fully frosting the cake, I used a pleated cake comb on the sides to get this effect. I only did one or two passes and called it a day. It’s not perfect, and I could have (should have?) kept going to try to patch it and make it perfectly smooth, but I was grumpy from the 4 failed attempts at the sauce and figured it wasn’t going to look like I envisioned anyhow so why bother! I used the cake comb from this set, but you can find similar ones out there.

I used a 1M piping tip to pipe the dollops on top and then placed slices of fresh cut banana on each rosette.

For the fresh banana slices, I drizzled lemon juice on them and then patted them dry before placing them on the cake. The lemon juice helps prevent the bananas from browning. It worked great!

If you love bananas foster or just banana desserts in general you will not be disappointed. It’s packed with banana flavor and a bit of a kick from the banana liqueur and rum. Plus the vanilla ice cream flavored frosting… Have I sold you on it yet? I hope you love it as much as we did!

Tips for making this Bananas Foster Cake

• The recipe as-is will also work in two 8″ pans. For three 8″ pans, 1.5x the recipe.
• To make cupcakes, all you need to do is reduce the baking time — start checking at 15mins or so.
• Do not overcook the sauce as it will thicken too much once cooled and be difficult to use.
• Please use extreme caution if you choose to flambé the sauce.
• I used the cake comb from this set, but you can find similar ones out there.
• I use vanilla bean paste in the frosting but you can use regular vanilla if you like — sub 1 for 1.
• To prevent the banana slices on top from browning, drizzle them with lemon juice then pat dry.
• Be sure to check my Swiss Meringue Buttercream post for tips and troubleshooting.
• Learn how to keep your cakes moist using Simple Syrup.
• To help ensure your cake layers bake up nice and flat, check out my Flat Top Cakes post!

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Bananas Foster Cake

4.80 from 10 votes

This Bananas Foster Cake transforms a classic dessert into a delicious layer cake! Banana cake layers, bananas foster filling, and vanilla bean buttercream.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 2 hours hours

Cook Time 40 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours 40 minutes minutes

Servings 12

Calories 806kcal

Author Olivia

Ingredients

 

US CustomaryMetric

 

1x2x3x

Banana Cake:

• 2 cups cake flour sifted
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup mashed overripe bananas approx. 2 medium
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar packed
• 1/2 cup buttermilk room temperature
• 2 large eggs room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla

Bananas Foster Filling:

• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup dark brown sugar lightly packed
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 large bananas slightly underripe, sliced into 1/2" pieces
• 1/4 cup banana liqueur
• 1/4 cup dark rum

Vanilla Bean Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

• 6 large egg whites
• 2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 cups unsalted butter cubed, slightly chilled
• 2 tsp vanilla bean paste

Instructions

 

Banana Cake:

• Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour three 6" cake pans, line with parchment.
• In a medium bowl, whisk cake flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Set aside
.
• In a measuring cup, combine mashed bananas and buttermilk.
• In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat butter until smooth. Add sugars and beat on med-high until pale and fluffy (2-3mins).
• Reduce speed and add eggs one at a time, fully incorporating after each addition. Add vanilla and mix until well combined.
• Alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with flour (3 additions of flour and 2 of buttermilk). Fully incorporating after each addition. Do not overmix.
• Spread batter evenly into prepared pans and bake for 35-40mins or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean.
• Place cakes on wire rack to cool for 10mins then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.

Bananas Foster Filling:

• Place butter, sugar, and cinnamon into a large pan. Stir to combine. Cook over medium heat until sugar is dissolved.
• Stir in banana liqueur and place banana slices into the pan. Cook until slightly softened and browned.
• Add rum and stir to combine. Cook until rum is hot.
• {optional} Flambé the mixture. Use extreme caution if doing so. Cook until flames subside.
• Remove from heat. Gently remove banana slices from the pan and set aside. Cool sauce and bananas completely before using on cake.

Vanilla Bean Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

• Place egg whites and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk until combined.*
• Place bowl over a pot with 1-2" of simmering water and stir constantly with a whisk until the mixture is hot and no longer grainy to the touch or reads 160F on a candy thermometer (about 3mins).
• Place bowl on your stand mixer and whip on med-high until the meringue is stiff and cooled (the bowl is no longer warm to the touch (approx. 5-10mins)).
• Switch to paddle attachment. Slowly add cubed butter and mix until smooth.**
• Add vanilla bean paste and and whip until smooth.
  

Assembly:

• Place one layer of cake on a cake stand or serving plate. Drizzle with 2-3 Tbsp Foster sauce. Spread a thin layer of buttercream on top of the layer and pipe a border around the outside to hold the bananas in. Fill the middle with half of the cooled bananas. Drizzle with 1-2 Tbsp more Fosters sauce. Repeat with next layer and place final layer on top. Apply a thin coat of frosting all over the cake. Chill for 20mins.
• Frost and smooth the outside of the cake, generously frosting the sides specifically. Smooth with an icing smoother.
• Use a pleated cake comb on the sides of the cake. Repeat, scraping off more frosting each time, until smooth.
• Pipe rosette dollops using a 1M tip with remainder of frosting and place fresh banana slices on top.

Notes

*Ensure there is NO trace of egg yolks in your whites and that your mixer bowl and whisk is completely grease free or your meringue won’t stiffen.
** The buttercream may look like it’s curdled at some point. Keep mixing until it is completely smooth.

If you choose to flambé the sauce, please use extreme caution.

Bananas Foster recipe from Brennan’s

Calories: 806kcalCarbohydrates: 95gProtein: 7gFat: 44gSaturated Fat: 27gCholesterol: 148mgSodium: 164mgPotassium: 319mgFiber: 1gSugar: 75gVitamin A: 1390IUVitamin C: 2.8mgCalcium: 96mgIron: 0.7mg

The nutritional information and metric conversions are calculated automatically. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this data. If this is important to you, please verify with your favorite nutrition calculator and/or metric conversion tool.