Banana Pound Cake With Caramel Cream Cheese Glaze

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You’re in for a real treat with this delicious, ultra moist banana pound cake. Every bite is bursting with fresh, real banana flavor and the perfect hint of spice. Finished with a rich and decadent caramel cream cheese glaze, this dreamy pound cake is sure to impress at any occasion.

A slice of banana pound cake on a wooden plate with the rest of the dessert in the background.

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Why You Need to Make This Recipe
Ingredients
Step-by-Step Instructions
How to Serve
Recipe FAQs
Expert Tips
Perfect Pairing
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📖 Recipe

Why You Need to Make This Recipe

Banana lovers, rejoice! Classic pound cake gets a banana-fueled makeover with this recipe. Like traditional pound cake, this recipe is dense and rich, but the banana gives it a wonderfully fresh flavor.
Perfect for using those frozen bananas. Are you like me and have way too many frozen bananas on hand at any given moment? This banana bundt cake recipe will help you clear that freezer space in the tastiest way.
No dry cake here. Thanks to all that fresh banana and a hefty dose of buttermilk, this fruity pound cake is perfectly moist.
Easily serves a crowd. As a rich, dense cake, a small slice goes a long way, so you can get 12-16 servings from one batch.

Bonus: If you love this banana pound cake, you will also adore my bourbon banana bread. Talk about best banana bread ever!

Ingredients

In our banana pound cake ingredient list, you may have noticed there’s no baking soda or baking powder. That’s not a mistake.

Traditional pound cake does not use any chemical leavening. We give the cake its lift by a lot of beating. This is called physical leavening.

The beating times may seem a little long, but that's exactly what we need to incorporate enough air into the batter, resulting in a final product that's dense as a pound cake should be but not so much that it feels like a brick in your stomach.

If you don't have any buttermilk on hand, I recommend you make your own rather than substituting with regular milk. I love the subtle tangy flavor buttermilk adds, and it's easy to make.

We pour ½ tablespoon lemon juice or distilled white vinegar into ½ cup whole milk and let the mixture sit for five to 10 minutes. After that quick sitting period, we have our buttermilk substitute.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: To start, we mix together our flour, salt and cinnamon, and then sift the mixture into another bowl. We set aside the bowl for now.

Step 2: Now we add our dark brown sugar, white sugar, butter and vanilla extract to a large mixing bowl (photo 1) and give it a good beating for five minutes until it's light and fluffy like so (photo 2).

Showing the process of beating the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

Step 3: From here, we beat in our eggs. Rather than add our eggs all at once, we beat in one at a time just until combined (photos 3 and 4).

Beating the eggs into the mixing bowl with the batter.

Step 4: With our eggs incorporated, we now alternate between adding our flour mixture (photo 5) with our buttermilk (photo 6).

Adding the flour mixture and buttermilk in the mixing bowl to the batter.

Step 5: And now we give our batter one last round of beating. This will take about five minutes with a stand mixer or six to eight minutes with a hand mixer. The batter will be thick and fluffy (photo 7) and then we stir in our mashed banana (photo 8).

Step 6: Just like that, our batter is ready. We pour the batter into a well-floured bundt pan and bake (photos 9 and 10).

Showing the process of beating the batter and preparing it for baking.

Step 7: While our banana pound cake bakes, we prepare our caramel cream cheese glaze. For this step, we add cream cheese, caramel and vanilla extract to a mixing bowl (photo 11) and beat until it's light and fluffy (photo 12). Then, we add powdered sugar about ½ cup at a time and beat (photo 13).

Once we incorporate all the powdered sugar, we add a little milk to give it the perfect drizzling consistency (photo 14). We now have our glaze to top our banana bundt cake.

A collage showing how to make the caramel cream cheese glaze in a mixing bowl.

Step 8: Once our cake finishes baking, we allow it to cool directly in the bundt pan (photo 15) and then allow it to finish cooling on a wire rack. Looks delicious, huh?

The banana pound cake in a bundt pan as it cools.

How to Serve

Once the cake cools, drizzle or pour the glaze all over. For a drizzle as pictured, I used a squeeze bottle to get those fine lines, but you are welcome to pour it directly on the cake if you'd like more glaze in each bite.

While the cake is delicious on its own, I especially love serving this banana pound cake with a scoop of ice cream. I paired this cake with a maple-rum ice cream and topped it with my bourbon caramel sauce but replaced the bourbon with rum. My Baileys ice cream or butterscotch ice cream would also be delicious.

The banana pound cake on a wooden plate with a scoop of ice cream and caramel on top.

Recipe FAQs

How do you freeze bananas for baking?

We have a few options for freezing. This comes down to personal preference and how you like to use your frozen bananas.

Mashed: If your frozen bananas are reserved for baking, this option is great because the banana is ready to go once thawed. Simply store in an airtight freezer bag.
Whole peeled: Using this method, we first peel the bananas and store the whole bananas in a flat layer in a freezer bag.
Whole unpeeled: With this method, we place the bananas right in the freezer or store in a freezer bag. To make peeling easier, I recommend giving the bananas about 10 minutes or so to thaw.
Sliced: If you like using frozen bananas for smoothies or cocktails, this method is for you. Like the above methods, store the sliced bananas in a freezer bag.

Why are overripe bananas best for baking?

Overripe bananas are much sweeter and more flavorful, which makes for a superior baked good. During the ripening process, starches convert to sugar to give the overripe banana that extra sweet taste. I like to let my bananas turn nearly black and then freeze them or add to a baked good right away.

How do you sift the flour mixture?

To sift, you can pass the flour mixture through than actual sifter or fine-mesh sieve, or you can give it a good whisk. If you'd like to see this in action, check out this video that shows the three ways to sift flour.

How do you store pound cake?

We want to make sure the cake is stored in an airtight environment to keep it moist. I recommend keeping it under a cake dome. The cream cheese glaze has enough sugar in it to act as a preservative, so it will keep just fine in room temperature. This banana pound cake is best consumed within three days.

Expert Tips

Make sure your butter, buttermilk and eggs are at room temperature. Since we rely on physical leavening, we need to properly incorporate the ingredients, and room-temperature ingredients mix much better than cold ingredients.
Likewise, it's essential to soften the cream cheese. If the cream cheese is cold and hard, we'll be left with lots of lumps instead of a fluffy texture.
Do not scoop a measuring cup into your flour and white sugar to measure. Instead, spoon the ingredients into your measuring cup and then level with a knife. Scooping can pack in too much of your ingredient and throw off the entire recipe.
When beating the sugar and butter, periodically stop the timer and scrape the butter off the side of the bowl. Turn the timer back on when you continue to whip.

Perfect Pairing

I love a bold barley wine with banana desserts. Considering how hefty pound cake is, we want a big beer that can stand up to our dense, rich dessert, and barley wine does just that. Plus, you'll love how those caramel, nutty and dried fruit notes pair with the banana.

If you're craving a glass of wine, I'm a big fan of a tawny port. Similar to the barley wine, this is a bold wine with caramel- and toffee-like notes.

Or maybe you're in the mood for a cocktail. For the spring and summer months, I love my Painkiller cocktail. Made with fresh orange juice, pineapple juice, cream of coconut and rich dark rum, you'll love the tropical flavors with the fruity banana.

However, if it's the fall or winter, pair this banana pound cake with my chai old fashioned. The cozy chai spice notes and warming bourbon with the banana and cinnamon are wonderful together.

If you love banana sweets, I hope you do yourself a favor and make this banana pound cake. I truly can't think of a more perfect dessert for fellow banana lovers.

Cheers!

The banana pound cake on a wooden serving platter with yellow flowers to the side.

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