Do you ever get tired of making banana bread with your overripe bananas? I actually don’t – my family loves my mother’s banana bread recipe, I can always count on each and every one of them to fully enjoy it when I pop one in the oven. But, I can never say no to a snack cake. There is something just so appealing to a cake that asking you to eat it as a snack – instead of dessert. It is like you are getting permission to have a few desserts during the day. So, when I was flipping through my Cooking Light magazine, and found this recipe, I could not help but run out to the store and get some bananas to hide until they were too brown to eat.
So, first you must look at the ingredients for this cake. This is probably one of the healthiest cakes I have ever made, but you would hardly know it. There is very little sugar in this cake, therefore, it is extremely important that you make sure the bananas are VERY overripe. I am talking black skins – spots are just not going to cut it. The riper the banana, the higher the sugar content, and that natural sugar is what you need to make this cake sweet enough. This cake stayed moist for a couple of days, and the whole family loved it. We cut it into 16 pieces, and at about 100 calories a piece, this cake was spectacular.
Ingredients
- 6.75 ounces all-purpose flour (about 1 1/2 cups)
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup plain low-fat yogurt
- 3/4 cup mashed ripe banana (about 1 medium)
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg, lightly beaten
- Cooking spray
Preparation
Preheat oven to 375°.
Weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and the next 5 ingredients (through salt) in a large bowl; stir with a whisk. Make a well in center of flour mixture.
Combine yogurt, banana, oil, vanilla, and egg in a small bowl; stir until well blended. Add yogurt mixture to the flour mixture in large bowl, stirring just until moist.
Pour the batter into a 9-inch square metal baking pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 375° for 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool cake in the pan 10 minutes on wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.
For a printer-friendly version of this recipe, please click here: Banana Snacking Cake
First Look, Then Cook 
This is precisely the type of slightly sweet treat that I will be craving after the holiday indulgences! I love that the cake relies more so on the natural sweetness of overripe bananas than on added refined sugar. Bookmarked!
Yum! I’m going to share this on my Glamour.com blog on Monday! I’ll give you credit for the photo, and send folks back your way for the recipe. Hope that’s OK. Thanks for the healthy inspiration! xo
Sarah – thanks so much for the link and write-up about this cake – I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did!! I really appreciate it.
This cake is AMAZING!!! I am bananas about bananas and use them constantly. This fits in nicely with my sweet tooth cake loving side AND my dedicated to eating healthy and exercising side! Next time i may let the ‘nanas ripen even more and cut out almost all of the sugar the recipe calls for. Awesome recipe, thanks for sharing…and a special shout out to Glamour because thats where i saw the recipe :)