One of my Grandma’s signature desserts was Banana Cake with Coffee Icing. She made it from scratch as a layer cake. I’ve made her recipe before and it uses every bowl in the house. No kidding. It requires whipping egg whites and stirring dry ingredients and mashing bananas and boiling water and beating egg yolks… A delicious, time-consuming mess!
I’ve simplified things a lot with this recipe. It’s still made from scratch. I use a sheet cake pan instead of doing a layer cake. But I kept the Coffee Icing recipe the same. It’s really mocha, but we didn’t use the word “mocha” back then. Mocha is a new-fangled word.
Here’s what you’ll need:
I did forget to put the eggs in the ingredient photo, so imagine there are 2 eggs there with the other ingredients.
Here’s what you’ll need for the Coffee Icing:
Banana Cake with Coffee (Mocha) Icing
Ingredients
For the cake
- 1 stick butter softened
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 cup buttermilk or milk with Tbs. vinegar stirred in
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 2 mashed bananas
For the icing
- 1/4 cup butter softened
- 1/2 cup cocoa
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1/3-1/2 cup cold coffee
Instructions
For the cake
- Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer bowl.
- Add the eggs, milk and vanilla. Mix till blended.
- Stir the baking soda and salt into the flour, then add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix well.
- Add in the bananas. Mix well.
- Spread into a greased 10″x15″ pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool completely before frosting.
For the icing
- Whip butter and cocoa together with electric mixer.
- Add powdered sugar, vanilla and a little coffee.
- Continue to mix and add coffee by the Tbs. until frosting reaches a spreadable consistency.
- Frost cooled cake.
This looks sooooo good. But I’d be afraid to make it. Either my kids will love it (and kids 10 and under shouldn’t like coffee flavored anything yet, in my book) or they won’t like it and my husband and I will eat the whole thing! So maybe I’ll have to half the recipe in an 8×8 pan and hide it front he kids!!
PS-making your mac and cheese today and Viet. rice for dinner today!
This is such a great looking cake. I don’t know if I would like the coffee in it though.
WOW! I think that’s a fabulous combination, but I’ve never tried it together. VERY interesting…how nice you made the recipe process simpler. Very special you use your grandma’s recipes!
made this – my girls loved it! They were worried about the coffee in the frosting – but it is just enough to enhance the chocolate flavor. You can’t taste the coffee. Thanks!
I made this today, and my family loves it! The coffee gives the frosting such a rich deep flavor. LOVE this cake! Thanks for sharing a gem of a recipe. 🙂
I can hardly wait to try this. A banana mocha cake was a specialty of my great aunt. Yummy.
How fun! We’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts!
I know this is old, but for any of you that don’t drink coffee, substituting Pero (kind of a coffee-tasting hot drink substitute) works great as well! 🙂