Banana Smash Cake with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

I am in denial.  Complete and utter denial.

My baby is no longer a baby.  She is a toddler.  Okay, okay, she has been toddling around for about a month now.  And she talks... a lot (it just happens to be in her own language).  She wears shoes all the time when we go out now.  And she is getting tall.  So I should have seen this coming.  But somehow... its still like a sad realization that she won't be tiny and a little snugly baby forever... even if she is always my baby in my heart.


So we decided to honor this momentous occasion of her first birthday with a party and a smash cake.  The party was great... Scrunches was in a great mood through the whole thing, the petting zoo we hired we pretty good (although I should have realized that most of the kids would be too afraid of the animals to go into the pen and pet the animals!), and the food and company were all wonderful.  But the cake?  OMG the cake.

We had two cakes for Scrunches.  The first was this fancy creation, made by Deerfields Bakery.  It was a two tiered birthday cake with one tier of chocolate frosting with custard filling and a tier of banana cake with cream cheese and chocolate custard filling.  SO GOOD.

I cannot believe that my baby is a toddler now!

Seriously... how cute is this cake???

The second cake we had was special just for Scrunches.  I really wanted to make her a cake, so I decided to make her a smash cake.  Now a lot of people are not familiar with a "smash cake" and for good reason... its a fairly new trend to have one at a first birthday party.  It is exactly what it sounds like: a cake that the birthday baby gets to smash to smithereens and eat as they wish.  I decided to make a banana cake with a sugar free frosting so that it would not be too horrible is Scrunches ate a LOT of it.  And boy did she.

It all started out nicely...

... followed by a poke... 

It started out with a timid poke of the cake. Then she slowly started to be more and more aggressive with her pokes at the cake until she was picking up handfuls and squishing it between her fingers.  It was not until I fed her a tiny bit that she realized she could eat it.  The cake was being eaten and squished with great delight, but Scrunches was still being relatively neat keeping the mess limited to her mouth, hands and lap.  A friend of mine went over and smeared some frosting on Scrunches' forehead and then all bets were off.  Cake and frosting were in her hair, on the floor, all over her face... even in MY hair.  Who says my girl doesn't like to share??

This cake is a great recipe for kids because it is very light, it has some fresh fruit in it (bananas!) and is not very sugary.  Its also a great recipe for adults too when you are looking for something a little different to make.  The bananas make the cake so incredibly moist.  I have no idea when I have ever made a cake this light and moist.  Deliciousness!  Since we were trying to avoid chocolate for Scrunches (we try not to give her caffeine), we kept this simple with a vanilla cream cheese frosting that literally is only two ingredients and takes about 30 seconds to make.  For an adult I might have put some sort of chocolate filling inside or poured a chocolate ganache over the frosting to decorate for a delicious chocolate touch.

Okay enough talking.  Lets get baking!

Banana Smash Cake

Ingredients:

• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3 eggs

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Grease bottom only of baking pan or line cupcake pan with liners.  

Mix all ingredients together.  Pour into pan (I used an 11x7 and also made about 9 cupcakes.  You can use a 6 in round pan and also do 16 cupcakes... or whatever other amount of cake your heart desires!) and bake for 25-30 minutes.  Check for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the middle of the cake.  If it comes out clean the cake is done.

This cake got sliced along the middle to make a two layer sheet cake.  I then cut it into rounds to make a four layer cake.

I frosted these cupcakes with the left over frosting from the cake (I made a double batch of frosting) and took them to Scrunches' school for her class.

Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1 (8 ounce) brick of cream cheese
• 1 (6 ounce) container of vanilla yogurt

Directions:

Seriously this is crazy simple.  Just mix the two ingredients with a hand mixer until well blended.  Frost cooled cake as desired.

mmm... frosting

I used a Tupperware as a guide and cut around it to turn a sheet cake into four small rounds for a mini layer cake.

I frosted bottom up.  I put down a layer, frosted the top, pushing the frosting over the sides and frosted the sides.  I kept doing this with each layer.  In the end the sides were frosted a total of four times. It worked out okay, even though this is not the proper way to frost a layer cake!

Cake before the frosting was all smoothed over.

Undecorated but frosted cake! Don't mind the antacid in the background.  You will not need that with this cake.

I decided to make a zebra stripe pattern to go with the party's safari theme.  To do so took some trial and error.  In the end the best method I found was to cut out stripes from paper, lay them on the cake and spray food color on the cake.  Using the sharp point of a knife I lifted the paper off.

In person the color was much more vivid.

Voila! Scrunches Safari cake is ready to be smashed!

Enjoy!

Source: Betty Crocker