Looking for a yummy make-ahead sweet treat? Banana Crumb Coffee Cake is perfect for brunches, afternoon tea, or even as an indulgent breakfast!
Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday! How are you celebrating the moms in your life (or yourself!)?
I’m back home after spending an AMAZING 11 days in Ireland (follow my Instagram feed and stories for pics and watch for travel tips here soon!). I love traveling but it’s so nice to be home with my family again. We’re planning a low-key Mother’s Day brunch here at our house with my parents, and my brother and his family.
Recently, I shared 35 Make-Ahead Brunch Recipes that are perfect for Mother’s Day. And I am excited to share one more: my make-ahead Banana Crumb Coffee Cake!
In the words of my husband, “This is the best banana cake I’ve ever had.” It’s light, fluffy, and moist- literally so perfect!
-MELISSA
Got ripe bananas to use up?
If you buy a lot of bananas like we do, you inevitably also end up with some ripe ones near the end of their prime that you want to use up. There’s only so much chocolate chip banana bread one can make.
So I also like to make this Banana Crumb Coffee Cake to mix things up.
So good!! Definitely a new favorite.
-Katie
Bananas + Coffee Cake + Crumb Topping = Food Bliss
I used to think that coffee cake had actual coffee in it. Nope. Coffee cake is named as such because it is usually enjoyed with a cup of coffee. That said, I think it would be amazing to make an espresso coffee cake! But, that’s for another time.
Right now, let’s talk bananas. If you have a couple of ripe bananas that you need to use up, this banana coffee cake with streusel topping recipe is a delicious way to do so!
It was delicious! Lovely recipe! Perfect with coffee!
-Kara-lynne
Dairy-Free Banana Crumb Coffee Cake
This Banana Crumb Coffee Cake recipe is:
- more moist and tender than plain ol’ coffee cake, thanks to the addition of ripe bananas,
- dairy-free, although you can use regular dairy if you don’t have a dairy allergy or sensitivity,
- topped with crunchy sweet crumb topping
- perfect with a cup of tea or coffee for breakfast, brunch, afternoon snack, or after dinner dessert!
How far in advance can I make this recipe?
You can make this yummy recipe a day in advance and either store at room temperature or in the refrigerator.
You can also freeze this cake inside an airtight freezer-safe container for up to one month. Simply thaw at room temperature for a few hours before serving.
“Amazing! Took it to work for my staff and I have to make another one as it was gone too fast and everyone loved it! So freaking good!”
– Reader Christine
These are my tried and true kitchen essentials. These are the best kitchen tools and appliances I personally cook and bake with in my own home! From my favorite cooking tools to baking tools, the best small appliances for home cooks, and more, this kitchen essentials checklist will help you master most recipes in your home kitchen!
Best Multi-Cooker Appliance
I love my Ninja Foodi! I have the Foodi 8-Quart 9-in-1 Deluxe XL Pressure Cooker (model FD401). In addition to pressure cooking, it can air fry, broil, dehydrate, slow cook, sear/saute, and more. And I can often cook two items - a side and a main dish - at the SAME time in the Foodi!
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I have and use this 8-quart Instant Pot Duo a few times a week. Be sure to check out my Instant Pot Recipes!
Best Blender
This Vitamix is one of the more affordable Vitamix blenders, and it gets the job done! I use this blender almost every day, for smoothies, soups, sauces, and so much more!
Best Stand Mixer
This 5-quart KitchenAid Stand Mixer is a workhorse in my kitchen! I use it almost every day for everything from cookies to pizza dough to icing. I use mine so much, I have two: one in a limited edition Ocean Drive color, and one in white.
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This is my newest air fryer, purchased in 2019. I love my basket style air fryer, but also needed to do recipe testing with a rack/tray style air fryer since so many of you now use this style. The InstantPot Vortex Plus is a 7-in-1 workhorse that serves as an Air Fryer, Toaster Oven, and Rotisserie Oven, which allows it to Air Fry, Rotisserie, Roast, Broil, Bake, Reheat, and Dehydrate. The 10-quart capacity means you can air fry A LOT OF FOOD in one batch! Versus making several batches in the 5-6 Quart basket style air fryers.
Best Air Fryer: Basket Style
During our kitchen remodel, I learned how to create delicious dishes using our GoWise Air Fryer, and I love it! This 5.8 Quart, 8-in-1, XL Air Fryer is perfect size for families with 3+ people.
Best Large Capacity Air Fryer Basket
This Instant Pot Vortex 4-in-1 Air Fryer is a 6 Quart, basket air fryer with 4 One-Touch Programs, Air Fry, Roast, Bake, Reheat. The basket can accommodate a 2-pound bag of fries and a 4-pound chicken.
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This is my newest slow cooker - the CrockPot MyTime Slow Cooker. I LOVE it!! It's a 6-quart programmable slow cooker with an easy-to-clean ceramic pot.
Another Great Slow Cooker
I've had this Ninja 3-in-1 Cooking System for 10 years, and it's amazing! I love using it mainly as a slow cooker. I also love to use it to keep food warm for parties. Cleans up easily too!
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I have the older version of this 2-quart Cuisinart ice cream maker and it is still going strong after 10+ years! It's so easy to use and comes with a great little instruction booklet that's easy to follow.
More Recipes You Might Like:
- Classic Chocolate Chip Bars
- Gingerbread Loaf with Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting
- Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins
- Mini Citrus Bundt Cakes
And check out my latest cookbook, The Super Easy Teen Baking Cookbook. It has 60 beginner-friendly, step-by-step baking recipes.
Banana Crumb Coffee Cake Recipe
Banana Crumb Coffee Cake
Ingredients
Crumb Layers
- ½ cup cold unsalted butter (8 tablespoons), cut into small cubes, I use vegan butter to keep this dairy-free
- 1 cup all purpose flour (gradually add more by the tablespoon if needed)
- 1 cup packed light brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Cake
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature, again, use vegan butter for dairy-free option
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup almond milk (you can also use 1%, 2%, whole milk, or even buttermilk)
Glaze (optional)
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1-2 tablespoons almond milk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350º F. Grease a 9″ x 13″ baking dish with butter or cooking spray; set aside.
- In a large bowl, use your hands or two forks to crumble together the cold butter cubes, flour, sugars, and cinnamon until the mixture resembles a crumbly topping. Set aside the crumb mixture.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.
- In a stand mixer, mix softened butter on medium until creamy, about 2 minutes. Add the sugar and mix for another minute, until well incorporated. Then add the eggs, vanilla, and mashed bananas, and mix just until ingredients are incorporated (do not overmix!)
- Turn the mixer down to low, and alternate mixing in milk and flour until all ingredients are combined.
- Pour half of the cake mixture into the prepared baking dish. Top with 1/3 – 1/4 of the crumb mixture. Then pour the remaining cake mixture on top of that layer and finally, top evenly with the remaining crumb topping.
- Bake at 350º for 50-55 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
- To make the optional glaze: In a small bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon of milk. Add more milk as needed until you get the glaze consistency you prefer. Set aside.
- Cool at room temperature for 5-10 minutes before drizzling the glaze over the top, slicing, and serving.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Recipe was excellent. Everyone loved it!!
-April
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Perfect recipe! Definitely more time intensive than a standard banana bread but I wanted to try something different and it was well worth it. Highly recommend trying it!
So glad you enjoyed it, Jess! Thank you!
Gone in 1 day!!! This recipe is wonderful being that I’m fed up with banana bread every time we have ripe bananas. Everything about the recipe was great! Only a couple of things- 1. I modified it to my liking by 1/2 ing the sugar in the cake so that I could make a cinnamon sugar swirl layer, and wouldnt be too sweet. Also added walnuts & almonds to the crumble mixture. The only difficulty I came across was that I had a hard time determining if the center was cooked or not after 55 mins. Pretty gooey, ended up toasting it too much but wasn’t really noticeable. I would do a total of 1hr 5 mins to be safe, and keep a watchful eye not to burn the top. Super flavorful and we DEVOURED it!! Definitely my new go-to recipe! Thank you!
Excellent. I don’t know that I will ever use my bananas for banana bread again! I didn’t use the streusel topping as that would have been too much IMO. Thank you for the awesomeness, the whole family loved it, including my 90 yo Dad, who has had tons of banana recipes over his lifetime.
This recipe is fantastic! I’m always looking for different ways to use up over ripe bananas and I know I will make this again. For the glaze i used 1/2 cup powdered sugar and roughly a 1/4 cup of unsweetened Hershey Special Dark Cocoa with the almond milk and that chocolate flavor with the banana is very delicious :)
So happy to hear you loved it, Laura!! And love the cocoa glaze substitution you did. Sounds delish!
Not sure how this got such rave reviews. My topping came out one big blob, no crumbs whatsoever. I did the recipe EXACTLY as it says. I’ve made many crumb cakes over the years and I have never had one to come out like this. I was going to take to a dinner party tonight, but I can’t with it looking like this. Store bought it is, I guess. Ugh!
So sorry to hear that, Lisa! What a bummer. We’ve personally made this dozens and dozens of times over the past two decades and have never had that experience, and hundreds of others have made it with success over the years. There are so many variables that might have caused your streusel topping to turn out that way so it’s hard to guess without knowing a lot of specifics. But I hope you try it again in the future with success! It’s one of my entire family’s favorites — and many readers’ favorite recipes too.
It sounds like your butter wasn’t cold
Just made it and shared some and got the comment…”OMG…best I ever had!”. And it is really good and moist!
Thanks for sharing!
Yay! That comment makes me so happy! Glad you all loved it, Donna!
I made this last night in about an hour and it was the best banana dessert I think I’ve ever made. OMG, it is so buttery, caramelized and crunchy. I’ve never made a crumb cake before, so I was really happy with it.
I was wondering if I could do a half recipe? This made a HUGE cake – much bigger than I need.
Thank you.
Yay! Love hearing how much you loved it! I’ve never tried to cut the recipe in half (my family gobbles up the whole huge cake in a few days!) so I can’t say whether it would work with this recipe or not. But if you do try it, please comment back and let us know how it went!
Where does the coffee appear in the recipe?
I mentioned this in the post itself, but traditional coffee cake does not have coffee in it. It’s called coffee cake because it was originally created to enjoy with a cup of coffee :)
Wonderful! Perfect amount of topping and the taste is amazing! 🤗
Yay! So glad you loved this banana crumb coffee cake, Sandi!
Approximately how many grams is 3 bananas? P
You can use anywhere from 2 to 3 bananas. I can’t give you the estimate in grams because most conversions measure mashed bananas in cups versus the quantity of bananas. As long as you use 2-3 medium to large bananas, you should be fine!
I’m indulging in this delicious treat right now! It was so easy to make and the end result is fabulous. My husband’s coworkers all agree as well! Thank you for sharing the recipe
Yay! So happy you all loved this banana crumb coffee cake so much!
You should change the wording from “mix milk and flour” to “milk and dry ingredients” because I totally messed that up :(
I almost did the exact same thing! I Agree the wording here should be changed.
Great recipe, easy to follow and turned out wonderfully. I used sliced almonds in the batter which I think worked adding another dimension of flavour. Thanks!
So happy you loved it, Trudy! Thanks for sharing your addition of sliced almonds. What a great idea!
Would it be okay for me to use oat milk for this recipe?
Yes! I believe at least one of the other readers have used oat milk with success. I use almond milk every time I make it and it works well. The texture with oat milk may be thicker. If you try it, let us know how it goes!
My parents loved this so much!! Both took one bite and went “This is way too good”, the compliments did not stop there. I can’t explain the sense of achievement this recipe gave me :) Thank you so much!
This is a fantastic recipe, I make banana crumb muffins often because we always have overripe bananas on hand. Wanted to try a new recipe this one is such a winner! The family wants me to keep making this version and if Being honest, I’ve been low carb past few years and totally off for the last few weeks this was such a treat!
Payton, I am so glad you and your family loved it!