Spiced Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

A fruit-sweetened spiced banana cake with cream cheese frosting. This cake is gluten-free and sweetened with bananas and dates. Perfect for a baby smash cake or a simple celebration.

April is a month full of celebrations for us, so it only made sense that I shared my favorite cake recipe: This spiced banana cake with cream cheese frosting.

This recipe is inspired by Snixy Kitchen’s banana date cake, which I made for the first time last April. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Since today is my 24th birthday (where does the time go?!), I knew I had to make this cake again – with a few modifications to make it fruit-sweetened. I also made it for Shaun’s birthday (and Easter) on April 1st. Then I made it again last weekend to photograph and to adjust the recipe as needed. Finally, I’m making it one more time this weekend for myself. I mean, it’s my birthday after all and my favorite way to celebrate is with food!

So, back to the spiced banana cake.

If there’s one fruit-sweetened cake you have to try, this is the one. Also, it just so happens that this recipe is gluten-free!

I’m seriously debating to use this recipe as our wedding cake, just decorated a little differently. It’s that good. (Update: we did).

The cake itself is sweetened with bananas and dates, which are processed in a food processor with oil, vanilla and water. This results as a delicious liquid sweetener. The dry ingredients are then added to the food processor to blend everything together. No need for an extra bowl! I add the eggs at the end and pulse them a few times into the batter. The flours I used in this recipe are brown rice flour, oat flour (or just oats, which will be processed anyways) and millet flour.

This is what your liquid sweetener will look like – As in your blended bananas, dates, water and vanilla.

I tried this cake with only rice flour and oats, which turned out fine, but a little gummier. So, if you don’t feel like buying millet flour for this recipe alone, feel free to use oat flour instead, but know that millet flour gives it the best texture. In other words, it may be worth trying millet flour. You can always buy a small quantity to try (I got mine at Bulk Barn).

Now, for the frosting. I used a similar recipe as the cream cheese frosting on my pumpkin cupcakes. Cream cheese, dates, butter (or margarine) and vanilla are blended together in the same food processor or blender (that’s been cleaned). You may have to scrape the sides a few times and process for a while to break down the dates and end up with a smooth frosting. I add 1-2 tablespoons of milk to help blend everything nicely, but you may not have to, depending on your blender or food processor. A small (but strong) food processor or blender would work best in this case since it’s not a very big quantity of frosting. Whatever you have should work; just know that it may take some patience to get that smooth frosting. Also, if you want to make things easier, you can swap the dates for maple syrup. I just wanted to keep things fruit-sweetened for this cake. It’ll be good either way!

If you make this spiced banana cake, be sure to leave a comment and/or give this recipe a rating! I love to hear from you guys. And of course, if you try this recipe, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram!