Banana Cake with Lemon Frosting

I have a go-to banana cake recipe that I’ve been using for about 20 years. When I spotted this Banana Cake with Lemon Frosting recipe in Nana Ling’s cookbook, I had a hunch that my go-to recipe was about to be replaced. My feeling came from the state of the Banana Cake recipe page. It’s well-worn (see picture below) and quite possibly has some banana cake splatters from 80 years ago! This is exactly what some of the pages look like in my cookbooks. I’m not very good at keeping my cookbooks pristine. They’re always front and centre of the action and sometimes get too close to the action. So if a recipe is popular, you can tell by the slightly messy-looking pages.  

My new go-to Banana Cake recipe

This recipe is quite possibly the perfect banana cake recipe and is now my banana cake recipe of choice. Sorry old banana cake recipe, you’ve been replaced. The cake is moist and a little more dense than the more “cakey” varieties. It’s also less oily than my other recipe. The banana cake approaches banana bread territory, but once you add the frosting it’s most definitely a cake. I’m not going to go into the difference between banana bread and banana cake here, but I found this interesting article on the topic.

The icing on the cake: lemon frosting

Nana Ling’s recipe just includes an instruction to add lemon icing. So, here I’ve used my own lemon frosting recipe. It’s sweet, but not too sweet, and has quite a burst of lemon.

Nana Ling’s Banana Cake with Lemon Frosting recipe

Keep scrolling for the tested and tweaked version.