Banana Bread Crumb Cake
Banana Bread flavor with a cakier texture and a delectable crumb topping.
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It used to be the case that when I had bananas on the counter that were getting too spotty, I turned to one place and one place only — my favorite quick banana bread recipe. But banana bread isn’t the only option out there when you need to deal with aging bananas and, besides, it’s good to try something new once in a while, especially when that something new leads you to eating cake.
Banana Bread Crumb Cake just might be my new go-to banana recipe. This stuff is gooooood. Enough like a coffee cake to work for breakfast, it’s also just sweet enough to work for dessert too. And while it has that lovely mild banana bread flavor (with a lighter crumb), it had me at the crumb topping.
While you do need to wait until you have some elderly bananas, this is the nice kind of recipe where you probably have most of the other items in your pantry already. It’s made up of the basics — flour, butter, sugar, salt, eggs… nothing out of the ordinary.
You need three bananas and I find the ideal stage to be when they’ve gone spotty but haven’t started to turn black. Once they’ve blackened, they become overly sweet and overly soft and the flavor starts to turn a bit. A spotty banana is the perfect happy medium.
Like with banana bread, you just mash those bananas up and then start to build your batter. You mix in butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla, and then your dry ingredients and some milk. This makes a 9×13 pan, so you’ll have plenty to go around.
The cake is great, don’t get me wrong — but my favorite part might be that crumb topping. This is a simple one, just cubed butter, brown sugar, and flour that you want to crumble until it resembles coarse crumbs. Some goes in the middle with batter layered below and above and the rest gets sprinkled alllll over the top.
It takes about as long to bake as a loaf of banana bread does — fifty minutes or so — but I can promise you it’s very, very worth it.
This is something I love to make when we have company. It’s always popular with kids but grown-ups love it too — it’s great alongside a cup of coffee.
Banana Bread Crumb Cake
Diet: Vegetarian
Watch How It's Made
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 3 very ripe bananas, lightly spotted
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup milk
For the crumb topping:
- 1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, cubed
- 2 cups light brown sugar
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a 9x13-inch baking dish with butter or nonstick spray.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.
- In a separate larger bowl, mash the bananas, then stir in butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until well combined.
- Alternate adding flour mixture and milk to the banana mixture, stirring in between additions until combined. Set aside.
- For the crumb topping:
- Combine cubed butter, brown sugar, and flour in a large bowl and mix with a fork or pastry cutter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
- Pour half of the batter into the prepared baking dish. Top with 1/3 of the crumb mixture, followed by remaining half of the batter. Top with remaining crumb topping.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 50-55 minutes.
- Serve warm or at room temperature and enjoy!
Recipe adapted from Cookies and Cups.
