Banana Pudding Upside-Down Layer Cake

Banana Pudding— but make it layer cake.

Velvety vanilla cake, Nilla Wafers, caramelized bananas, brown sugar, and banana pudding layered high, wrapped in buttercream, and finished with shimmering Nilla Wafer pieces.

• Cake #2 of my “Cakes With Pudding In It” series. If you have a better name for this series PLEASE tell me in the comment section! 😂
• This Banana Pudding Upside-Down Cake is a fun twist on my BEST Vanilla Cake Recipe.

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Banana Pudding Upside Down Layer Cake At A Glance

Why You’ll Love It

What You’ll Need

Let’s Make A Cake!

In this post I’m going to outline the key components of the Banana Pudding Upside-Down Layer Cake as well as the assembly.

For a full tutorial on assembling this cake, check out my Video Tutorial Here!

The Cake

• The BASE recipe that you’ll need for this cake is right here. We will be modifying the recipe slightly to include vanilla wafers in the batter + a layer of caramelized bananas on the bottom of each cake layer!
• Follow all of the steps in that recipe post but once you’ve made the cake batter— PAUSE and come back here and follow the instructions below before baking!!
  
  For the caramelized bananas:
  • Mix together 1/2 C. melted butter + 1 C. brown sugar.
  • Slice 2 ripe bananas into 1/4″ thick coins.
  • After greasing and flouring cake pans, add a layer of the brown sugar and butter mix, then top with a single layer of banana coins.
    
    For the cake batter:
  • Once you make up your vanilla cake batter, fold in 15 crushed vanilla wafers.
  • Pour the cake batter into your baking pans and top with a light handful of crushed vanilla wafers.
  • Lightly press the crust into the cake layers.
  • Continue on and bake as instructed in the Vanilla Cake Recipe Post.
  • Chill layers completely before assembling cake!

The Fillings

• For the banana pudding filling (pudding mix, cream cheese, whipped topping, etc.) see recipe card at the end of this post. 😊
• For the strawberry portion of the filling, rather than using fresh strawberries inside the cake, I decided to use strawberry preserves— they packed more of a punch on the strawberry flavor. Fresh strawberries sort of got lost in the middle of all of the cake and pudding!
• My Vanilla Buttercream Recipe.
  • If you’re sticking to a minimal finish as I do in my video, one batch is all you need!
  • If you’re going to completely cover the cake for an opaque finish and more ornate decorating, double the recipe! I would keep about 1/4 as a stiff consistency and the rest can be softer for decorating!

The Assembly

• Click here for the video tutorial!

The Decoration

• I finished this beauty with a “naked” buttercream finish + shimmering vanilla wafer pieces. I achieve this look by dusting the wafers with THIS luster dust from The Sugar Art!
• If you want to see exactly how I did it, check out the video here!

Print

Any Questions?

• Shoot me an email to sydney@wildflourmama.com with any questions you may have! I’d love to help!
• You can also shoot me a DM on Instagram or TikTok @wildflourmama and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.