Perfectly moist, light and fluffy vegan banana cake loaded with banana flavor and topped with lemon frosting. Can be made as a sheet cake or a layer cake.
So banana cake. It’s similar to banana bread, but not the same.
This vegan banana cake with lemon frosting and walnuts, let’s not forget the walnuts, is so delicious I am struggling to find the words to describe it right now.
I absolutely adore banana bread already, which is why I’ve made vegan banana bread, vegan chocolate chip banana bread, vegan chocolate banana bread and vegan banana bread muffins!
But this was my first go at a vegan banana cake. And it came out incredibly well. Just a few small changes from a banana bread recipe to a banana cake recipe and you get light, fluffy cake rather than the slightly denser banana breads.
And this cake can be either a sheet cake or a layer cake!
Sheet Cake or Layer Cake?
I was inspired by Sally’s Baking Addiction (a non-vegan blog, but full of great baking tips) to go with a sheet pan version of the cake.
I love a good sheet cake, it’s great to feed a crowd, so if you need to get more slices out of it, it’s a great option! We have a delicious chocolate sheet cake and a vanilla sheet cake too.
However, you can also make this as a 2-layer 8-inch cake. It’s wonderfully good either way. So I’ll also include instructions for that in the recipe card (and there are some photos further down below).
The importance of ripe bananas
It’s very important that you use ripe bananas when you make this. They must be spotty! Don’t go using green bananas or even yellow bananas that don’t have any spots yet.
You want the spotty bananas, this is perfectly ripe which means they are at the perfect sweetness for your dessert.
The great thing about this vegan banana cake is I was able to use relatively little oil. Just a quarter cup of coconut oil for the whole recipe. And it was deliciously, perfectly, moist. The moistness comes from those bananas, the coconut oil, some homemade vegan buttermilk and the addition of some applesauce to the recipe.
Other than using them on top for decoration, I didn’t use walnuts in the actual recipe. But this would be a good addition if you fancy it. Just chop up some walnuts (about 1 cup should be fine) and add it to the batter right at the end.
How to make this as a layer cake
You can easily adapt this recipe to making a layer cake. The recipe stays exactly the same, you just divide the batter between two 8-inch cake pans.
Make sure your cake pans are sprayed with non-stick spray and cut out circles of parchment paper to line the bottoms of the cake pans.
Bake for 30 minutes.
The amount of frosting in the recipe is designed for the sheet pan version of the cake, so as you can see it is enough for the top and middle of a layer cake, but it’s not enough for the sides.
If you want to be able to frost the whole cake including the sides, then use the lemon frosting recipe from our vegan lemon cake instead.
You will love this vegan banana cake, it is:
- Perfectly moist
- Light and fluffy
- Loaded with banana flavor
- Topped with lemon frosting
- Simple
- Can be made as a sheet cake or a layer cake
Keep leftovers covered in the fridge where they will stay fresh for up to 5 days.
More vegan cakes!
- Vegan Carrot Cake
- Vegan Vanilla Cake
- Vegan Red Velvet Cake
- Classic Vegan Chocolate Cake
- Vegan Pound Cake
- The Best Vegan Chocolate Cake
I’d love to know what you think of this vegan banana cake. Any questions? Post them down below. We’d love you to also rate this recipe, it’s super helpful, thank you.
And you definitely should sign up to our email list while you’re here, you’ll get a free recipe ebook (awesome!) and you’ll stay updated with all our latest recipe postings!
Vegan Banana Cake with Lemon Frosting
- Prep Time: 20 mins
- Cook Time: 40 mins
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 15
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeDescription
Perfectly moist, light and fluffy vegan banana cake loaded with banana flavor and topped with a delicious lemon frosting. Can be made as a sheet cake or a layer cake.
Ingredients
For the Vegan Banana Cake:
- 2 and 3/4 cups (344g) All Purpose Flour
- 1 cup (200g) White Sugar
- 1/2 cup (100g) Brown Sugar
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Cinnamon
- 2/3 cup (160ml) Vegan Buttermilk
- 3 Large Ripe Bananas (12.7 oz/360g peeled weight)
- 1/4 cup (60ml) Coconut Oil
- 1 Flax Egg (1 Tbsp Ground Flaxseed Meal with 3 Tbsp Hot Water)
- 2 Tbsp Applesauce
- 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
For the Vegan Lemon Frosting:
- 3 and 1/2 cups (420g) Powdered (Confectioners) Sugar
- 1/3 cup (75g) Vegan Butter
- 3 Tbsp Lemon Juice (freshly squeezed)
For Decoration:
- Crushed Walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Spray a 9×13 sheet pan with non-stick spray and set aside. For layer cake instructions see notes*.
- Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the white and brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon and mix together.
- Prepare the vegan buttermilk by placing 1 Tbsp of freshly squeezed lemon juice into a measuring jug and then adding soy milk up to the 2/3 (160ml) line. Allow to sit for a minute to curdle.
- Add the bananas, vegan buttermilk and coconut oil to a blender jug and blend briefly until combined. Don’t overblend or the bananas will start to oxidize.
- Pour the blended bananas, buttermilk and coconut oil over the dry ingredients and mix in.
- Prepare your flax egg by mixing 1 Tbsp flaxseed meal with 3 Tbsp Hot Water and allowing to sit for a minute to become gloopy.
- Add the flax egg, applesauce and vanilla extract and whisk with a hand whisk to remove any lumps.
- Pour the batter out into the sheet pan and spread out evenly.
- Place into the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Check it at 30 minutes it might be perfectly done, I have had differing results in different ovens.
- Place the whole sheet pan onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely before frosting.
- Prepare your frosting by adding the powdered sugar, vegan butter and lemon juice to the bowl of an electric mixer and starting at slow speed, gradually increase speed until perfectly thick and smooth. If your frosting turns out too thick, add more lemon juice a drop at a time until you get the right consistency. If it turns out too thin, add more powdered sugar until it reaches the right thickness.
- Frost the cooled cake, and decorate with crushed walnuts.
Notes
*Nutritional information is for 1 slice of 15 including frosting and crushed walnuts.
*Recipe adapted from my Vegan Banana Bread.
*To make this cake as a 2-layer 8-inch cake, the recipe stays exactly the same. Just pour it out into 2 8-inch cake pans that have been sprayed with non-stick spray and lined with parchment paper and bake for 30 minutes at 350°F. The frosting is enough to frost the top and middle but not quite enough to frost the sides. If you want enough to frost the whole layer cake including the sides, then you can use the lemon frosting recipe from our vegan lemon cake.
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: Vegan
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Slice (of 15)
- Calories: 376
- Sugar: 50.8g
- Sodium: 236mg
- Fat: 8.7g
- Saturated Fat: 3.7g
- Carbohydrates: 72.5g
- Fiber: 1.8g
- Protein: 3.5g
Keywords: vegan banana cake
Mouthwatering!
Hi, can I make this as a layer cake with 9 inch cake tins?
Hi Nicole, yes this would work fine as 9-inch, the layers would just be slightly thinner. As you can see in the pics, as an 8-inch layer cake the layers are very nice and thick, so it would be fine for them to be a bit thinner if you make it for 9-inch. You won’t need to make any other changes, the baking time will be the same as with the 8-inch. All the best! 🙂
Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly! I’ll let you know how I go! 😊
How long does it take for the cake to cool? Thank you!!
Not too long generally, but if you’re in a hurry you can put it in the fridge to speed it up!
Is too much sugar bad for you?
Too much of anything can be bad for you. Water is really good for you, but if you drink too much of it, you can get hyponatremia and that’s bad for you! So the goal is to have everything in moderation. At least that’s my goal! 🙂
Can this be made gluten free?
I’m sure! If I was making this cake gluten-free, I would switch out the flour for a gluten-free all purpose flour blend such as the one made by Bob’s Red Mill, and then I would increase the coconut oil and applesauce. I’d probably increase the coconut oil to a half cup and the applesauce to 1/4 cup and see how that goes! Gluten-free flour absorbs more moisture so you have to account for that by using more oil/applesauce so that the cake is still moist. You could increase the banana a bit too, but it might not be needed if you do those other two.
Such a great recipe
I just made this for my sons birthday cake. It was super easy to follow with readily available ingredients and the cake was perfect
Will definitely make it again
Great stuff! Thanks so much for posting! 🙂
hi, in the ingredients, you mentioned 160ml buttermilk but for the method you mentioned 180ml, so how much do i add?
It’s 2/3rds of a cup, which is 160ml, so the method contains a typo, which I will now fix, thanks!
can i use a round cake pan? if so how many inch and what adjustments do i have to make for the ingredients?
This recipe was designed as a sheet cake. So it’s bigger than a round pan, quite a lot. So I don’t know what adjustments you would need to make, you’d have to experiment. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say you’d need a minimum of 2 round cake pans to make it into a layer cake.
ABSOLUTELY LOOOOOOOVE THIS RECIPE!!!!!!!!!!!!
★★★★★
Awesome Lizanne! Love to hear that! Thanks for your review! 🙂
Amazing recipe! i am so glad i came across your page Alison. I added some lemon rind & more juice to the icing to make the flavour stronger but overall it was so appreciated by my folks! Thumbs up
★★★★★
Wonderful to hear Neidi! So glad you found us too! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
This cake is absolutely delicious! I followed everything pretty much exactly, except used almond milk instead of soy milk and I lined my pan with parchment paper. The flavors are perfect together and go great with a cup of tea. Thanks for posting! I can’t wait to try more of your vegan recipes.
★★★★★
Wonderful to hear Laura! Thanks so much for sharing! 🙂
Delicious cake recipe, I chose to use a vegan cream cheese frosting in place of the regular frosting and I have to say it was amazing, you should try it! Thanks for the great recipes!
Awesome! Thanks for sharing Ebony! 🙂 And as soon as I can get a regular supply of vegan cream cheese – I’ll be on it! 😉
Hi! Where I live coconut oil is quite expensive, can I substitute it for melted vegetable butter or just oil, would that work aswell?
I would substitute for a different oil rather than butter, I think it would work perfectly fine. All the best! 🙂
Thank you, Alison! I made this for my dad’s 89th birthday, and everyone loved it!
★★★★★
Wonderful Deborah! So happy to hear that. Thanks so much for posting! 🙂
Hi Alison,
I just made this cake with a lot of substitutions to make it vegan, gluten free, and nut free. My son is allergic to a lot of stuff, I’m so glad I found this recipe and tried it. I substituted the flour with sweet rice flour and no tree nut. He’s allergic to soy and coconut too, since it was a small amount of soy, I decided to try it to see how he reacts, because I couldn’t think of another type of milk to try, I could have tried rice milk was afraid it wouldn’t cure. As for coconut, one website said coconut oil is OK since it’s been refined. The result: it tastes yummy and very chewy. Taste like chewy banana bread, but not as sweet. The sweet taste is light, it’s delicious, it’s not as puffed up as yours in the picture. The chewy consistency kinda reminds me of a brownie cookie. I think the chewy part might be from using sweet rice flour instead of regular rice flour. Other than that do you know why its chewy? Do you have any other type of gluten free flour that you recommend for this cake?
Hi! I would definitely use a gluten-free all purpose flour blend to replace regular all purpose flour. If you try to use only one kind of flour (not a blend) it is much more difficult to turn out right. Even with a gluten-free all purpose blend, I would usually make other adjustments in a cake to make sure it’s moist enough as gluten-free flours absorb more moisture. You can see my gluten-free chocolate cake where I discuss this. 🙂
Hi, I like the sound of this recipe and am definitely going to try it when the bananas are ripe! That’s the hard part – waiting for them to ripen so i can get baking! Can you tell me what the applesauce does in the recipe and if it’s replaceable with anything else that I might already have? Could I add more flax egg instead? I’m going to attempt it using gluten free flour so I will adjust the recipe like you’ve mentioned. I hope it comes out as nice as yours looks.
Hi Claire, the applesauce is easily replaceable if you don’t have any on hand, you can use extra mashed banana or you can even use extra coconut oil to replace it. All the best! 🙂
Such a nice recipe, I tried it in my restaurant, and people told me it’s a superb recipe and a nice looking cake. Thanks for sharing this recipe with us..
Wonderful! So happy you enjoyed it and so did your guests! Thanks so much for posting. 🙂
Do you weigh the coconut oil in its melted form or solid form?
Hi Arti, either/or is fine. You don’t have to specifically melt the coconut oil first in this recipe since it is going to be blended. But if it is melted then it would be 60ml which is the liquid measure, but if you are using the gram measure, that would be around 56g, and whether it’s firm or melted should not make a difference to the gram measure. All the best! 🙂
Hello. Can this cake be frozen?
Thanks for the recipe.
Yes it can be frozen! 🙂
Great cake! Thanks for the recipe. I have trouble with vegan baking and this came out delicious.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing Zak! 🙂
This cake is delicious!! Had ripe bananas & found this…The icing makes it!! So fresh tasting with the lemon juice! I’m so proud of this! Plan to share with my friend! I love to see what you post! Really awesome!! Thanks so much for all the hard work you put into all this!
★★★★★
So happy to hear you loved it Diana! Thank you so much for the wonderful review! 🙂