In Colombia, the bananas that go black on the counter end up in a rectangular pan. Torta de banano (TOR-tah deh bah-NAH-no) is the oil-based banana cake sold by the square in neighborhood bakeries and baked at home on Sundays: 4 very ripe bananas, 4 eggs, brown sugar, cinnamon, no mixer, and about ¾ inch (2 cm) of batter that bakes through in 35-40 minutes at 350°F (180°C). If you know American banana bread, picture the same flavor spread thin, moister, and without the gummy streak in the middle of the loaf.
What is Colombian banana cake, and is it worth making?
How do you make Colombian banana cake? Mash 1 lb (450 g) of very ripe bananas and whisk in 4 eggs, ¾ cup (150 g) brown sugar and ⅔ cup (150 ml) oil. Fold in 2¾ cups (330 g) flour with baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt, spread in an 8x12 in (20x30 cm) pan and bake at 350°F (180°C) for 35-40 minutes, until the center reads 200-205°F (93-96°C). 55 minutes for 12 servings.
It’s a one-bowl snack cake for overripe bananas, and it’s worth making whenever you have 4 of them going soft. Because the fat is oil, it stays soft straight from the fridge and keeps for days, and because there’s no butter or milk in it, it’s dairy-free as written.
When it shines. Afternoon coffee, lunchboxes, a bake sale, a potluck where you need to carry something in the pan it was baked in. It’s a cake you cut into squares, not one you frost.
When to skip it. If you want a tall layer cake for a birthday, this is the wrong cake. And if your bananas are still yellow, wait: the sweetness and most of the banana flavor come from ripeness, and the oven trick that blackens bananas doesn’t fix that.
Real time. 15 minutes of work, 55 minutes until it’s out of the oven, and about 95 until it cuts cleanly.
Difficulty. Easy. No creaming, no whipping, no mixer. The only real judgment call is doneness, and a thermometer takes the guesswork out.
Colombian banana cake vs American banana bread
Both start with mashed overripe bananas, flour, eggs and sugar. What changes is the pan, the fat and the bake. King Arthur Baking’s banana bread, a good benchmark for the American style, goes into a 9x5 in loaf pan with a stick of butter, bakes at 325°F (163°C) for about 70 minutes and needs foil over the top for the last 25 to stop the crust burning. The Colombian version spreads a similar batter thin in a traybake pan and is done in about half the time.
That depth is the whole story behind the most common banana bread complaint, a raw strip in the center of the loaf. A thin layer of batter heats through before the outside overbakes; a deep one doesn’t.
Ingredients, how many bananas, and US and UK swaps
Everything is in the recipe card: 1 lb (450 g) of peeled banana, 4 eggs, scant ¾ cup (150 g) brown sugar, scant ⅔ cup (150 ml) oil and 2¾ cups (330 g) flour for 12 squares.
How many bananas, and how ripe
About 4 medium bananas. A medium banana, 7 to 7⅞ inches long, has 118 g (4 oz) of edible fruit according to the USDA, so 4 of them land close to the 1 lb (450 g) you need. Weighing the peeled fruit is more reliable than counting; 1 lb mashed is about 2 cups.
Ripeness matters more than quantity. America’s Test Kitchen baked the same banana bread with green, lightly spotted and very ripe bananas: green gave a taller, drier loaf that tasted vegetal; lightly spotted was fine in texture but short on banana flavor; very ripe gave the sweetest, moistest crumb with the most flavor. As a banana ripens its starch turns into sugar, and sugar holds water in the crumb. Look for skins that are more black than yellow.
Ripening them faster. Close the bananas in a paper bag with an apple or an already-ripe banana. Ripe fruit gives off ethylene, the gas that drives ripening, and the bag keeps it in; ATK found this gains you 1 to 2 days. The oven trick (baking bananas in their skins) turns them black and soft, but in ATK’s tests it did little to turn starch into sugar. Frozen bananas are fine if they were ripe when they went in: thaw them in a bowl and use the liquid too.
Oil or butter
Colombian home bakers mostly use oil, and so does this recipe. Oil is liquid at fridge temperature, so the cake stays tender cold; butter gives a dairy flavor and a firmer crumb once chilled. If you want butter, don’t swap cup for cup: butter is about 81 % fat (USDA), so matching the fat in ⅔ cup of oil takes 170 g (1½ sticks) of melted butter. Calories barely move. Saturated fat does: about 8 g a square with butter, against 2 g with oil, and the cake is no longer dairy-free.
Swaps for a US or UK kitchen
| In the recipe | US | UK | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Banano (Colombian banana) | any supermarket banana | any supermarket banana | nothing; plantains don’t work, too starchy |
| Azúcar morena | light brown sugar | light brown soft sugar | dark brown gives a deeper color and a hint of molasses |
| Panela (traditional option) | piloncillo or panela in Latin stores | Latin grocers online | darker, richer; same weight |
| Harina todo uso | all-purpose flour | plain flour | with self-raising flour, leave out the baking powder |
| Aceite | canola or vegetable oil | sunflower oil | avoid extra-virgin olive oil, you’ll taste it |
Equipment
An 8x12 in (20x30 cm) pan, a large bowl, a fork, a spatula and a sieve. In the UK that’s the standard 30x20 cm traybake tin. A US 9x13 in pan works too: it’s about a quarter larger, so the batter is thinner and bakes faster (see the pan chart below). An instant-read thermometer is optional and the most reliable way to avoid an underbaked cake.
Pan sizes and bake times
The full batter weighs about 2.8 lb (1.29 kg). What changes from pan to pan is how deep it sits, and so the oven temperature and the time.
For the deepest pans the oven drops to 340°F (170°C, gas mark 3) so the center catches up before the top over-browns. Muffins bake in 20-22 minutes and don’t need to cool before you eat them.
How to plan it, from bowl to plate
15 minutes of work. Turn the oven on first: the batter is ready in the same 15 minutes the oven needs to heat.
Make ahead. Bake it the day before. I like it better on day two, when the crumb has settled and the cinnamon comes forward. Don’t mash the bananas the night before, though: mashed banana turns brown and loses aroma. If you must get ahead, mix the mash with the eggs right away and refrigerate it covered.
For a crowd of 24. Make two separate batches and bake two pans at once on two racks, swapping them at minute 25. One giant bowl of batter is harder to fold evenly and tends to leave dry pockets of flour.
How to tell it’s going right.
| Stage | What you should see |
|---|---|
| Bananas | mash easily with a fork, a few small lumps left |
| Batter | thick, falls from the spatula in ribbons, no dry flour |
| Minute 25 | top golden and firm at the edges, center still soft |
| Minute 35-40 | edges pulling away, center springs back, 200-205°F (93-96°C) inside |
Done is a number, not a toothpick. Banana strands cling to a toothpick even when the crumb is cooked, which tempts you to overbake. King Arthur Baking’s target for quick breads is 200-205°F (93-96°C) in the center, with no part below 200°F. Without a thermometer, they suggest a thin knife pushed in two or three times: no wet batter means it’s done, and a few moist crumbs are normal.
Mistakes, allergens and kids
- Raw in the middle → the batter was too deep, or the oven wasn’t fully hot. Use the right pan, preheat 15 minutes, and check the center temperature. If it’s already out and underdone, return it for 10 minutes under loose foil.
- Dry → overbaked, or too much flour. A cup scooped straight from the bag can weigh 140-155 g (5-5½ oz) instead of 120 g (4¼ oz); over 2¾ cups that’s up to 3 oz (90 g) too much. Spoon the flour into the cup and level it, or weigh 330 g.
- Tough, with long holes → overmixed after the flour went in. 20 to 30 folds with a spatula.
- Sunken center → the door was opened before minute 25, or it came out too early.
- Bland → the bananas were yellow, not black.
- Fruit and nuts sank → toss them in 1 tbsp of the flour before folding them in.
Allergens. Contains wheat (gluten) and egg. As written it has no dairy; the butter version does. Walnuts are optional, and worth labeling if you take it to school or work. Banana is one of the fruits linked to latex-fruit syndrome.
Will kids eat it? Almost always: sweet, soft and plain. Skip the walnuts and chop the raisins for small children.
Versions worth making
- Quickest → 22 muffins at 350°F (180°C), 20-22 minutes.
- Air fryer → only a 6 in (15 cm) pan fits, with a third of the batter, at 320°F (160°C) for 30-40 minutes, covered with foil after 20 so the top doesn’t scorch before the middle sets. Those are the settings tested air-fryer banana bread recipes converge on. For the whole batch, use the oven.
- No oven at all → half the batter in a heavy 9 in (22-24 cm) pot, greased and floured, set on a heat diffuser over the smallest burner on the lowest flame, with a clean towel under the lid to catch condensation, 40-50 minutes. It’s the stovetop method Colombian site Pulzo publishes. Expect a moist, steamed-pudding texture with no browned top.
- Less sugar → cut it to 75 g (about ⅓ cup). The bananas already bring 55 g of their own sugars (USDA), and halving the added sugar takes each square from 17 g to 11 g of sugars and about 24 kcal lighter. It browns less and the crumb is a little denser. With no sugar at all it turns pale and dry, because sugar also holds moisture.
- Whole wheat → swap half the flour (165 g) for the same weight of whole-wheat flour, about 1½ cups. Fiber goes from 2 g to 3 g a square and the flavor turns nuttier. All whole wheat makes it heavy.
- Raisins and walnuts → the bakery version. 70 g (½ cup) raisins and 60 g (½ cup) walnuts add about 50 kcal a square.
- Guava paste on top → 3½ oz (100 g) of guava paste cubes scattered over the batter before baking, an idea Colombian chef Harry Sasson suggests. If you like guava, the Colombian guava roll is the other way it ends up in the oven.
For a showier fruit cake, the caramel pineapple upside-down cake bakes in a similar pan, and at Christmas the rum-soaked Venezuelan black cake is a different project altogether.
What it costs
At the US city average prices the Bureau of Labor Statistics published for August 2026, bananas were $0.652 a pound, large eggs $2.272 a dozen, flour $0.548 a pound and white sugar $1.024 a pound (BLS doesn’t price brown sugar separately).
Yield. 12 squares of about 2½ x 3 in (6.5 x 7.5 cm); cut 16 for an office table. Four medium bananas weigh about 1.5 lb (700 g) with the peel on my scale, which is the figure used in the chart.
What drives the price. Eggs and bananas are most of it. Walnuts, if you add them, will likely cost more than everything else combined, and butter instead of oil costs more than the bananas.
Serving, storing and freezing
How it’s eaten in Colombia. Cool or slightly warm, in squares, no frosting, with coffee, a mug of Colombian hot chocolate or a cold glass of aguapanela with lime. A spoon of dulce de leche or a scoop of vanilla ice cream turns it into dessert. On a kids’ dessert table it sits well next to fudgy chocolate brownies, cut from the pan the same way, and on a Colombian brunch spread it follows a plate of cheese arepas.
Room temperature. In my kitchen, covered or in an airtight box, 2 to 3 days; in a hot, humid climate, refrigerate it from day one.
Fridge. 4 to 5 days, wrapped once completely cool. It firms up; 10 minutes on the counter brings it back.
Freezer. The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service says food held at 0°F (-18°C) stays safe indefinitely; only quality changes. I wrap squares individually, bag them and use them within 2 to 3 months, before the edges dry out. Thaw wrapped at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours, or warm a square for 15-20 seconds in the microwave or 5 minutes at 300°F (150°C, gas mark 2).
Frequently asked questions
How many bananas do I need for banana cake? About 4 medium bananas, or 1 lb (450 g) peeled, roughly 2 cups mashed, for an 8x12 in (20x30 cm) pan.
Why is my banana cake raw in the middle? Usually the batter is too deep for the pan, the oven wasn’t fully preheated, or the door was opened too early. Bake it in a pan where the batter sits about ¾ in (2 cm) deep and take it out at 200-205°F (93-96°C) in the center.
What’s the difference between banana cake and banana bread? Mostly pan and fat. Banana bread is a deep loaf, usually made with butter, that needs about an hour or longer; Colombian torta de banano is a shallow sheet cake made with oil and done in 35-40 minutes.
Can I use oil instead of butter in banana cake? Yes, and this recipe does. To go the other way, use 170 g (1½ sticks) melted butter for ⅔ cup (150 ml) of oil.
How can I ripen bananas fast? Shut them in a paper bag with an apple or a ripe banana; America’s Test Kitchen found that saves a day or two. Baking them blackens the skin but doesn’t make them much sweeter.
Can I make it in a 9x13 pan? Yes. The batter is thinner, so start checking at 25 minutes; expect 30-35 at 350°F (180°C).
Can I make it in an air fryer? Only a third of the batter at a time, in a 6 in (15 cm) pan, at 320°F (160°C) for 30-40 minutes with foil over it after 20.
How long does banana cake keep, and can I freeze it? Frozen in wrapped squares, 2 to 3 months for the best texture. In the fridge, 4 to 5 days; covered on the counter, 2 to 3.
Nutrition
Per serving (1/12 of the cake, without raisins or walnuts), calculated ingredient by ingredient from USDA FoodData Central (SR Legacy) with the quantities above:
- Calories: 309 kcal
- Protein: 5 g
- Carbohydrates: 42 g
- Fat: 13 g, of which 2 g saturated
- Fiber: 2 g
- Sugars: 17 g
- Sodium: 259 mg
Oil and flour supply about two thirds of the calories. The bananas account for 55 g of the cake’s 203 g of total sugars. Baking powder, baking soda and salt together supply 89 % of the sodium. With raisins and walnuts, a square is about 359 kcal.
Back home in Venezuela we called this torta de cambur and baked it in whatever pan was around, usually a loaf pan, and it came out split on top and soft in the middle more often than not. In Colombia I learned to bake it low in a tray, the way bakeries sell it: same batter, half the depth. Nothing in my house goes to waste now; the blackest bananas of the week become Dylan’s Sunday snack. Josnaisis.