I buy lots of bananas in my house. Many times we get through them before they get overly ripe, however when they get too many brown spots I am not particularly fond of the texture and neither is anyone else in my house. Years ago I began to put them in the freezer when they get to this overly “ripe” state. This works perfectly so when I do have the urge to make banana bread, a banana shake or in this case a banana cake I have the perfect, overly ripe banana.

In the case of this banana cake, I cheated by doctoring up a yellow cake mix. I know, I know it’s not hard to whip up a cake batter…but I was feeling lazy and trust me, this is delicious and super moist. I love the caramel frosting that tops the cake and inside the cake I made a chocolate caramel frosting to give the cake a nice flavor addition.

Banana Cake with Caramel Frosting

Ingredients
Butter, for greasing the pans
flour, for dusting the pans
1 package plain yellow cake mix, (18.25 ounces) (I like Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix)
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 medium-size ripe bananas, peeled & mashed (about one cup)
1 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
Caramel Frosting (directions below)
Chocolate Caramel Frosting (directions below)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease two 9-inch round cake pans with butter then dust with flour. Shake out the excess flour. Set pans aside.

Place the cake mix, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl. Add the mashed bananas, water, oil, and eggs. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for one minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat for two minutes more, scraping the sides down again if needed. The batter should look well blended and the bananas should be well pureed. Divide the batter between the prepared pans. Place the pans in the oven side by side.

Bake the cakes until they are lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the center of each layer comes out clean, 30 to 32 minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and place them on wire racks to cool for ten minutes. Run a dinner knife around the edge of each layer and invert each onto another rack so that the cakes are right side up. Allow them to cool completely 30 minutes more.

Make the chocolate caramel frosting and spread it on top one of the cake layers. Top with the remaining cake layer and frost the top and sides of the cake with the Caramel Frosting. Garnish as desired. I used some fresh fruit and chocolate wafer crumbs.

Chocolate Caramel Frosting

Ingredients
1/4 lb. CC Confectionary Chocolate Truffle Caramel or other fine chocolate caramel
1 T. half & half
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar, sifted
2 T. butter (softened)
1 T. chocolate syrup

Directions
In a microwave safe bowl add chocolate caramel and half & half. Microwave in 30 minute increments until it is smooth. Like this:

In a mixing bowl fitted with a paddle attachemnt, combine the caramel mixture, powdered sugar, butter and chocolate syrup. Mix until fluffy. If you find the frosting to be to stiff, simply add half & half a tsp. at a time until desired consistency is reached.

Caramel Frosting

Ingredients
1/2 lb. CC Confectionary Madagascar Vanilla Caramel or other fine caramel
2 T. half & half
2 1/2 c. powdered sugar, sifted
4 T. butter (softened)

Directions
In a microwave safe bowl add caramel and half & half. Microwave in 30 minute increments until it is smooth.
In a mixing bowl fitted with a paddle attachemnt, combine the caramel mixture, powdered sugar, and butter. Mix until very light and fluffy – about 3 minutes. If you find the frosting to be to stiff, simply add half & half a tsp. at a time until desired consistency is reached.