From the Kitchen of Angie St. John
ALOHA! A dear friend of mine's Jack & Jill is coming up soon and I offered to make a sweet treat to bring. When she asked if I could do a banana coconut upside down cake, I was like “I have no idea”, but I gave it a whirl. It was fun to make and with my recipe, you end up with two cakes, so that’s always awesome! The bride to be enjoyed it and that’s all that matters. This type of cake would look beautiful displayed on top of a cake stand adorned with all things "luau" around it. A great sweet treat to enjoy before the end of summer! So get those grass skirts out and get baking.
Yields 2 cakes
You will need:
1 super moist yellow cake mix
3 eggs
1/4 oil (any type is fine)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup water
5 good sized bananas, sliced about 1/4" thick
1 1/2 cups shredded coconut
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter
Juice from 1 lemon
Baking Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350°F and spray 2 (8 inch) round cake pans with cooking spray.
2. Using a stand mixer or wire whisk, beat cake mix, eggs, oil, water, and sour cream on low until combined. Then beat on high for 1 minute, just until clumps are out.
3. Remember, this is an "upside down" cake, you will need to put the cake topping in the pan first, before the cake batter. Place banana slices evenly on the bottom of the two cake pans. I layered a few to use up what we cut.
4. In a small saucepan melt butter. Add brown sugar and lemon juice and heat until dissolved. Pour half of the brown sugar mixture into each of the 2 round cake pans over the bananas. Sprinkle coconut over brown sugar sauce.
5. Pour cake batter on top of the coconut into the two pans, dividing equally and bake 40 minutes or until toothpick in the center comes out clean.
6. Remove cakes from oven and let it sit until they cool a bit. This was difficult, as one was still so hot when I flipped it over and the other was a bit cooled. *If you flip too soon, you may burn yourself with the hot brown sugar mixture. However the cake that cooled quicker, the bananas stuck to the bottom a bit - so there must be a happy medium in there - I hope you find it!