Name: Banana Streusel Coffee Cake
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 50 min
Ingredients: 1/2 cup butter; 3/4 cup bananas (mashed bananas (2 medium)); 1 cup white sugar; 2 eggs; 1/4 sour cream; 2 cups flour; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon vanilla; 1/2 cup brown sugar; 1/2 cup white sugar; 1/2 cup quick oatmeal; 1/2 cup flour; 1/4 cup butter; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; pecans ((Optional)); 1 cup powdered sugar; 1-2 Tablespoons half and half

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Banana Streusel Coffee Cake

A Moist banana-filled cake topped with a buttery oatmeal-pecan streusel!

Hello, friends!

Today, I’m sharing a VERY special recipe with you all.

Why is it special?

Well, to start it’s amazingly moist. It’s filled with banana flavor. And it’s topped with one of my FAVORITE things!

S-T-R-E-U-S-EL!

But there’s something even more special about this recipe than the fact is TOTALLY scrumptious!

The original recipe for this yummy Banana Streusel Coffee Cake was given to me years ago by an AMAZING woman who was not only my first employer but a mentor who had such a profound effect on my life.

Alta was one of those- one in a million- kind of women. Beautiful inside and out. Full of love. Life. And laughter.

Everyone who met her loved her.

I was lucky enough to be one of those people. And even luckier that she decided to take me under her wing to teach me everything she knew about one thing she loved the most!

Baking.

Alta was OUT OF THIS WORLD talented when it came to baking.

She was SUPER creative. Enormously inspiring. And a shrewd businesswoman.

Being the owner of a busy restaurant, Alta learned quickly that to be successful she often had to improvise. This recipe for Banana Streusel Coffee Cake actually came to be because of her need to improvise.

Not one to ever turn away business, Alta had booked a group of 12 ladies who wanted a small luncheon that would also include cake and coffee. It was a Monday and food inventory was at the lowest it had ever been that day. The trucks weren’t scheduled to arrive until later that afternoon. But the ladies were scheduled to arrive in less than two hours.

Most folks would have been running around like a chicken with their head cut off, but not Alta. She simply went to the large refrigerator in the kitchen and then the storage pantry and quietly tabulated in her head what she had on hand.

Then within minutes, it was like a light-bulb went off and she knew immediately what she was going to make.

Unfortunately, when we started to gather the ingredients for the cake we realized that we didn’t have enough sour cream. In the years I had worked for Alta I knew of several substitutes. Buttermilk and yogurt to name two. But Alta surprised me with something totally out of the box’. “Can you be an angel and run up to our apartment and grab the bananas sitting next to the coffee pot?” she asked.

And that my friends, is how Alta’s recipe for Cinnamon Coffee Cake turned into Alta’s recipe for Banana Coffee Cake.

I can still remember the look on those 12 ladies faces when they took their first bite of Alta’s “improvised” masterpiece. They couldn’t believe how she could have whipped up something so delicious in such a short time.

I could believe it. Because Alta was magical like that.

Of course over the years I’ve made a few changes to the recipe. Like adding the streusel. I think Alta would have loved that because she loved streusel toppings just as much as I do!

This delicious cake has always been my ‘go-to’ whenever I need a quick and easy dessert, or just need to use up some VERY ripe bananas.

Here is the recipe: