Yellow Cake Mix Banana Bread

Even though I follow tips to store bananas so they stay good longer and still have great flavor, every once and a while they go past their prime. And then you know what time it is when you have overripe bananas: time to make banana bread.

However, recently I didn’t have a lot of time to bake but I did have a store-bought Betty Crocker box of cake mix in my pantry. So I played around with a recipe for making banana bread with yellow cake mix. Boy oh boy were the results great. This delicious treat is a keeper.

Yellow Cake Mix Banana Bread

If you’ve never heard of dump cakes, you don’t know what you’re missing. The notion of making a dump cake is this: you literally dump all of the ingredients in the pan you’ll be baking your cake in — or in my instance, yellow cake mix banana bread. Then you mix all the ingredients together, pop it in the oven and you get easy peasy banana bread.

To be clear, I didn’t have a loaf pan on hand when I decided to try this recipe. So I used a 13 X 9 Le Creuset cake pan casserole dish. I’m not surprised that the end result looked more like a cake than a loaf of bread. But, sometimes, looks don’t really matter when it comes to delicious food.

Easy banana bread recipe

I had a feeling that using cake mix would make this a great recipe and that it would turn out well. Because I know that when trying to make box cake mix taste better, adding ingredients like bananas is one of the things you’re supposed to do.

Well, I did that plus chocolate chips. I’m telling you, you’ll never go back to old-fashioned banana bread recipes, starting from scratch with flour, once you try this one. It really does make the best banana bread.

Ingredients Overview

Step-by-Step Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 F degrees. Treat your pan with nonstick cooking spray. Take your ripe bananas and mash them with a fork.

As I mentioned, this is a dump cake recipe. So add the cake mix, water, vegetable oil and eggs to the cake pan.

Mix with a fork. Once the batter is mixed, take a rubber spatula and run it around the sides of the dish to get any loose cake mix.

Add mashed bananas to the batter and stir well.

Add chocolate chips to the batter and stir well.

Bake time in the oven according to the cake mix package for about 16-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack before you slice and serve.

Notes

I followed the box cake mix directions exactly as printed. However, you could easily substitute the one cup of water with one cup of milk to give your banana bread a bit more protein.

Similarly, I used 1/3 of a cup of canola oil. Another kind of oil or 1/3 cup of melted butter would work as well. For a lower-fat version, you can always substitute applesauce or Greek yogurt for oil or butter. However, I can’t vouch for how well the cake will hold together.

My favorite add-ins are chocolate chips. However, I know plenty of people prefer to add a nut of one kind or another. If that’s how you like your banana bread, then go for it. You could even swirl in peanut butter to make peanut-flavored banana bread.

This is what I call a dump cake recipe. That is you dump all the ingredients you’re using to bake right into the pan you’ll put in the oven. But you don’t have to do it that way if you don’t want to. Feel free to mix the ingredients in a large bowl and then pour the batter into your pan for baking. If you’re making this into muffins, then use a muffin tin.

Have fun with the type of cake mix you use. I chose yellow because that’s what I had on hand. However, some other options to consider might include:

• butter pecan cake mix
• chocolate cake mix
• white cake mix
• strawberry cake mix (I love strawberry banana smoothies so think this flavor combo would be amazing)