Healthy Banana Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting
This Healthy Banana Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting is super moist, packed with fresh banana flavor, and it’s secretly good for you too — free of butter and sugar and full of fiber, protein and whole grains!
Peanut Butter & Jelly is so yesterday. The combination that is about to ROCK. YOUR. WORLD. is Peanut Butter + Banana! The peanut butter adds richness and decadence, the banana adds natural sweetness and pure satisfaction.
This Healthy Banana Cake is so moist and rich it tastes like it’s full of butter, oil and sugar. But it isn’t. It’s like Banana Bread in cake form and cloaked with peanut butter 🙂 Heaven, yes?
And it’s also light, yet surprisingly filling. So, as much as you want another slice you’ll be satisfied with just one.
One bite of this and your socks are bound to fly off. Tooootally 😉
Healthy Banana Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting
Ingredients
Cake:
- 136g (1 cup) Sweet White Sorghum Flour
- 120g (¾ cup) Brown Rice Flour
- 96g (½ cup) Homemade Vanilla Sugar (or dry sweetener of choice)
- 40g (¼ cup) Organic Corn Starch
- 1 tbs Double-Acting Baking Powder
- 2½ tsp Ground Cinnamon
- 1 tsp Apple Pie Spice or more Cinnamon
- ¼ tsp Salt
- 1 cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
- 1 cup Egg Whites (fresh, not cartoned)
- 1 tbs Vanilla Extract
- 2 tsp Liquid Stevia Extract
- 2 tsp Natural Butter Flavor
- 1 cup Mashed Bananas (very ripe)
- 1 tbs White Vinegar
Frosting:
- 225g (1 cup) Plain, Nonfat Greek Yogurt
- 150g (1¼ cups) Peanut Flour
- ½ tsp Liquid Stevia Extract
- 6 tbs Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
Instructions
For the Cake:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and spray two 8" cake pans with cooking spray (I also lined my pans with parchment paper circles).
- In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the sorghum flour, rice flour, vanilla sugar, starch, baking powder, cinnamon, apple pie spice and salt.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the almond milk, egg whites, vanilla extract, stevia extract, and butter flavor.
- In a measuring cup, mash 2-4 bananas until you get 1 cup. Stir in the vinegar.
- Pour the banana/vinegar mixture into the large bowl with the other wet ingredients and whisk together until mixture is smooth and even (~1 minute)
- Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients while whisking. When all is incorporated, whisk the batter vigorously to break up any clumps. Make sure to whisk the sides of the bowl to make sure all the flour is incorporated.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for ~31-33 minutes, or until the surface of the cakes spring back when tapped. Let the cakes cool in the pan for ~30 minutes then flip them over onto a wire cooling rack and let cool completely.
For the Frosting:
- In a stand mixer bowl with whisk attachment, add the greek yogurt, peanut flour and truvia. Mix on medium speed. Add the almond milk tablespoon by tablespoon, until the desired texture is achieved.
- Frost the cakes then refrigerate for 30 minutes. Slice and serve!
Recipe Notes
I was curious to see what the nutrient breakdown of this recipe would look like so I made a nutrition label for the cake and the frosting. To put it simply, I was shocked… in a good way! So delicious. So nutritious.
Then I wondered how this Healthy Banana Cake’s nutrition label would stack up to a typical/unhealthy recipe, so here’s the nutrition label for Betty Crocker’s Banana Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting…
I am horrified by what I calculated, especially when side by side to my healthy recipe’s nutrition label. A smaller (⅒th) slice of Betty Crocker’s cake has double the calories of a larger (⅛th) slice of my cake. My mind is blown. And to make matters worse, that small slice of cake has 68g of sugar. That is more than a ⅓ cup of sugar per slice (that’s 5 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons to be exact). A slice of that cake has the same amount of sugar as four Pop Tarts and more sugar than three Hershey’s chocolate bars. That really upsets me.
My recipe only has 280 calories for both the cake AND frosting… uhhh, YES please! Thanks to the 6g of fiber and 20g of protein, you’ll be full and satiated after one slice. Highly unlike the typical kind of cake, where one slice is never enough. We’ve aaaallll been there…
Because my cake is pretty low in fat I like to serve it alongside some extra peanut butter banana goodness. I mix a spoonful of my Banana-Infused Peanut Butter with a tiny splash of almond milk to make a rich and tasty glaze. I think it goes without saying that we all deserve a little extra peanut butter lovin’ 😉
See how moist this Healthy Banana Cake is? It’s seriously like heaven on a fork… soon to become magic in your mouth.
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With love and good eats,
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– Jess
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Indulge − no strings attached!
There is nothing better than PB and Banana….except maybe PB & Banana CAKE! 🙂 Amazing!
I usually bake banana cakes in square pans but I like this layered cake idea better. MORE FROSTING!!! 😉
Looks really moist too!
I am so glad I found your website. I got it from Pinterest. This sounds divine. My granddaughter gains weight easily. She is only 13 and being a Tae Kwon Do black belt, she must stay in shape. Another good but healthy dessert for her.
I am going to be on this site often.
Thanks for sharing! This is wonderful.
Tonya-
I’m glad you found my site too! I hope your granddaughter likes the cake, tell her congrats on earning a black belt! 🙂
-Jess
This looks delicious. Is there something that could be substituted for the egg whites to make it vegan?
Honey-
I’m afraid I don’t know of a good substitute for the egg whites in this cake. I’ve tried making this vegan using Ener-G egg replacer but the cake ended up being really dense and heavy. It took quite a bit of trial and error to make this cake light and fluffy, and adding more egg whites to the recipe is what did the trick. I’m sorry! 🙁
-Jess
looking delicious …..can’t wait to try this…!!!
Surkhab-
I hope you like the cake!! 🙂
-Jess
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Found this on FoodGawker and totally amazed at this and your blog concept! Keep em coming! 🙂
Aww thanks so much Priya! 🙂
Would the same amount of all purpose gluten free flour work in place of the sorghum and rice flours?
Jenny-
I haven’t tried using an AP gluten-free flour blend in this cake but I’m sure it would work just fine! Since most GF blends already contain starch, you can substitute the sorghum flour, brown rice flour AND corn starch with 2 cups of AP gluten-free flour 🙂
Hope you like the cake!
-Jess
it looks fattening. yum!
Okay, I made this today and I thought it was fabulous! I love your blog; I’m constantly checking it! Thank you soooo much! 🙂
Stephanie-
YAY I’m so glad you liked the cake!! Thanks so much 😀
-Jess
this cake looks delicious. Can regular gluten free baking flour be used instead?
Jacque-
I don’t have any experience with gluten-free mixes, so I’m not sure if it’ll work in here… but I guess it’s worth a shot! Maybe try replacing the sorghum flour, brown rice flour and starch with 2 cups of your gluten-free mix. I hope this substitution works out for you! 🙂
-Jess
Hi Jessica,
I’m wanting to make this for mother’s day but I was wondering if there is a good substitute for butter extract? Thanks!
Ariana-
The butter flavor just adds a yummy butter flavor, without all the butter 😉
Feel free to use vanilla extract instead! I hope you like the cake! 😀
-Jess
Can i just use one type of flour…instead of two?
Paulina-
I haven’t tried this recipe using just one flour, but I guess you could give it a shot! I would recommend using brown rice flour (because 100% sorghum flour can sometimes turn out crumbly). I hope the cake turns out for you! 😀
-Jess
Can you make this with oat flour instead of corn starch, sorghum flour, and rice flour? If so, do you think equal weight or equal volume? Or neither? Thanks so much!
No, I’ve tried it. Oat flour yields a super dense and gummy blondie-meets-brick texture 🙁
Are white vinegar and natural butter flavor essential to the recipe, or could I cut them out? If not, is there anything I can substitute them for?
The vinegar reacts with the leavening, so I wouldn’t omit it, or if you do just know the texture of the cake will be different. The butter flavor is there for flavor, just like vanilla extract. But that ingredient is optional so feel free to omit it or sub it with vanilla.
I used tapioca flour instead of sorghum and I only had boxed egg whites but it turned out perfect and soooo good. Thank you!!
Loved the idea of this recipe and would be willing to try it again but my first attempt came out more dense and gummy than a regular cake and not tons of flavour (although I was thinking maybe because the recipe asks it to be overmixed quite a bit). Could be that I’m not super used to gluten free baking yet. My aunt is gluten free and will still enjoy it as a treat however so it definitely won’t go to waste haha!
Loved the idea!