Banana Coffee Cake

This banana coffee cake is something you didn’t know you needed but you are going to be so glad you have it! The recipe is gluten free and dairy free and uses only a small amount of sugar. It’s the perfect amount of sweetness, perfect for a little morning treat or an afternoon pick me up.

In our house, bananas don’t get overripe very often. I use bananas daily in my smoothie so normally they are frozen before they are even close to getting dark spots. Lucky for me, and this recipe, we went out of town for a long weekend and that resulted in bananas being left behind. When I came back I was excited because that meant I could bake something new!

I don’t know about you, but I love cinnamon. My mom used to buy the Hostess Coffee Cakes when we would go to soccer tournaments on the weekends and they were always gone first. I’ve tried other coffee cake recipes when I was strictly paleo, but every recipe called for almond flour and unfortunately for me, almond flour does not agree with my stomach. Once I healed my gut and started reintroducing rice back into my diet, I grabbed a bag of Bob Redmill’s 1 to 1 Flour so I could start creating some nut free baking recipes.

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For this recipe I used three overripe bananas in combination with eggs, flour, vanilla, honey, coconut oil, and milk (I used coconut milk from the carton). For the crumble, I used grass fed butter but if you cannot tolerate butter you can use COLD ghee or coconut oil. The coconut oil will make for smaller crumbles but will still work. I also used coconut sugar for the crumble, but you could easily substitute for maple sugar, or even dark brown sugar.

The first thing you’ll want to do when starting this recipe is to take out your eggs and butter (if using) so they can get to room temperature. I typically leave them on the counter for a few hours. Once you are ready to get baking, you’ll want to mash up your bananas. I use a potato masher to get them good mashed and then switch to a fork to get the lumps even smaller.

Next, add in your eggs and mix well then add the remaining wet ingredients.

Now you can add in all your dry ingredients. I don’t like to overwork my cake mixes so I will measure out and add in all the ingredients at once and give it a good stir until it’s combined.

Now it’s time to combine your crumble ingredients! Add your flour, sugar, and cinnamon and mix well. Then add in your butter (or ghee/coconut oil) and mix using your hands to create a crumble. Make sure to mix it in until your crumble pieces are no larger than a dime.

Now we put it all together! You’ll want to make sure baking pan is either sprayed with non-stick spray or lined with parchment paper. Then you will add half the cake mixture to the pan, and top it with half the crumble. You will then dollop the remaining cake mixture on top of the crumble.

After you dollop the remaining cake in, take a butter knife and swirl or zig zag to mix the two layers of cake and layer of crumble together.

Top the cake with the remaining crumble mixture and it’s ready to go into the oven. For me, it took about 45 minutes to be done. I started checking it at the 35 minute mark but wanted to make sure the center was cooked perfectly! If you’re using a bigger pan, it’ll cook a little faster so as a rule of thumb I would start checking the cake at 35 minutes.