Easy Banana Berry Cake (Doctored White Cake Mix)

This Easy Banana Berry Cake is light, fluffy, and filled with the creaminess of bananas and tartness of raspberries. The addition of the luscious cream cheese drip sends it over the edge, to a whole new place! Best of all, this recipe starts with a boxed cake mix!

Doctored White Cake? Yes, Please!

I’ve been on a roll, coming up with all of the ways to doctor a white cake mix. Awhile back, I came up with 20 Amazing Recipes that Start with a White Cake Mix where I presented offerings like my Ultimate Chocolate Cake Recipe, my Italian Cream Cake, and my Brown Butter Walnut Cake.

Really, a white cake mix is so versatile! It can serve as the foundation for dozens of things. (I’m probably going to do a second post, listing several more ideas I’ve come up with.)

Because I’ve been spending so much time thinking about How to Doctor a Boxed Cake Mix, I knew that coming up with a simple banana berry cake would be a good addition. I had no way of knowing this would turn out to be one of my all-time favorite cakes, thanks to the addition of the raspberries and cream cheese frosting. (Yum!)

How to Make a Cake Mix Taste Better

As I covered in my Ultimate Guide to Doctoring a Boxed Cake Mix, there are dozens of ways to make a boxed cake mix taste better. Swap out milk for water. Use butter instead of oil. Add an extra egg. And throw in some additional ingredients.

In the case of this Easy Banana Berry Cake I did all of the above! Check it out. Here are the ingredients you’ll need to make your own!

Banana Berry Cake Ingredients:

You probably have most of these ingredients in your refrigerator or pantry right now! And if you’ve got three speckled bananas on hand, you’re golden! You’ll find a full printable recipe at the bottom of this post. Here’s a quick glance at what you’ll need:

FOR THE CAKE:

• white cake mix (I used Duncan Hines because it’s light and fluffy)
• melted butter
• eggs
• milk
• bananas
• raspberries

FOR THE DRIP:

• cream cheese
• powdered sugar
• milk or heavy cream

How to Make This Luscious Banana Berry Cake

This came together so quickly and easily! It’s a great one-bowl mix. Here’s how to whip it up:

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Place your bananas in a bowl and mash them. You can use a fork or a masher. In my case I used the paddle attachment of my stand mixer.

Melt your butter in the microwave. (Room temperature butter is fine too. It doesn’t have to be fully melted.)

Add cake mix, butter, and eggs to your bananas and mix well. Slowly work in your milk. (Hint: if you don’t have a white cake mix you can always use a yellow cake mix. It will work just fine!)

Once the batter is ready, fold in your berries. (I chopped my berries in half before adding them because I wanted to spread out the flavor.)

Prepare your pan by coating in non-stick spray. I used a bundt pan. (This is the perfect breakfast cake and bundt pans make wonderful breakfast cakes because they slice up so nicely.) Add your cake batter to the prepared pan.

Place bundt pan in center of oven and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until cake springs back to the touch. I used a cake tester to make sure mine was done on the inside.

Remove from oven and set the pan on a wire rack to cool.

(Note: See how my cake rose? Want to guess what caused that? If you said, “She probably didn’t take the time to use room temperature ingredients” you would be right. I was in a hurry. . .and it shows!)

After a few minutes, flip over onto the wire cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet.

Prepare your glaze: Whip your cream cheese until smooth and light. Add powdered sugar and continue to beat. Stir in about a tablespoon of milk. You want the icing to be loose but not runny like a typical glaze. (This is a cross between a drip and a glaze.)

Place your frosting in a piping bag and then drizzle across the cake, back and forth.

How to Store this Banana Berry Cake:

Place in an airtight container and refrigerate. (Cream cheese frosting requires refrigeration.) Bring to room temperature before serving. Slice and enjoy!

You can freeze this cake in an airtight container for up to two months. Thaw naturally.

What to Expect from This Banana Berry Cake:

Y’all, I hate to brag but this makes a delicious cake! It’s light and fluffy, and the bananas are not overpowering at all. In fact, I had to remind myself they were in there. It’s a moist cake, and very delicious.

I kept getting little bites of the raspberries and they were the perfect complement to the rest of the cake. The flavors just went together.

This is one of those white cake mix recipes you’re going to marvel over. No, really!

And speaking of which. . .can we just pause for a moment to pay homage to a true cream cheese frosting? No butter. No shortening. Nothing but cream cheese and powdered sugar. Yes, please! I could eat this stuff with a spoon!

Variations on this Simple Doctored Cake Mix

This is one of those cake mix recipes you’re going to love! It’s the perfect bundt cake!

I’m already thinking of how I can make this different next time! I might just. . .

• Serve as a layered cake with additional fresh raspberries and banana slices between the cake layers. (Use 2 8″ cake pans.)
• Serve with fresh fruit on the side.
• Turn this into a 4th of July cake by adding blueberries along with the raspberries.
• Skip the berries and add chocolate chips. Man, that sounds good, doesn’t it?
• Bake it in a 9 x 13″ dish and cover it with streusel (oats, butter, brown sugar, pecans). This thing just screams breakfast cake (or coffee cake).
• Bake in a loaf pan and slice like banana bread. You might cut back on some of the milk to make a thicker bread-like batter. Add a box of vanilla pudding to make it more dense. Instant pudding is great for texture. See my post titled The Most Delicious White Cake from a Box for more information on this.
• Bake in muffin tins to make banana berry muffins! Top with turibinado sugar before baking for added crunch.
• Make this recipe with a chocolate cake mix. (Different, right?)
• Swap out the raspberries for fresh blueberries. I’m thinking they would be just the ticket!
• Add maraschino cherries to the batter in place of raspberries, then serve with cherry pie filling drizzled on top. (Oh, yum!)
• Use my from scratch pound cake recipe as a base for this luscious banana cake.
• Start with a spice cake mix. Add walnuts. (Sounds delicious, right?)
• There are all sorts of extra ingredients you could add: coconut, pineapple, nuts, and chocolate. The possibilities are endless!
• Serve with a scoop of ice cream. Better yet, make your own ice cream out of frozen bananas!

Other Banana Recipes from Out of the Box Baking

I love baking with overripe bananas and boy, does it show! I’ve got so many different easy recipes I had to finally put together a post called 20 Amazing Ways to Use Ripe Bananas. Here are some of my favorites:

• Caramel Banana Cake: This one starts in a skillet and it’s absolutely loaded with rich caramelly flavor, along with yummy walnuts.
• Old Fashioned Banana Bread (with mayonnaise): Yep, you read that right. . .mayonnaise. I love baking with the stuff. Can’t get enough of it.
• Best Banana Pudding with Biscoff Cookies: If you love Biscoff and love banana pudding you’ll flip over this tasty combination.
• Easy Bananas Foster Cinnamon Rolls. I know. It seems impossible that cinnamon rolls could possibly get any better, but these are divine!
• While you’re perusing the web looking at recipes, check out this Banana Nut Muffins Recipe from Southern Home Express. They look delicious!

I could go on, but I’ll stop there. Check out my 20 Amazing Ways to Use Ripe Bananas post for the rest. You’re going to be thrilled to have options with those speckled bananas!

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Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy his luscious Banana Berry Cake, another in a long line of doctored cake mixes. It’s a great recipe, if I do say so myself. This easy banana cake will thrill your guests and it’s so easy to make!

That’s my goal, here at Out of the Box Baking. . .to give you the best possible options for doctoring a boxed cake mix. And boy, have I come up with a lot of recipes using white cake mix.

Enjoy, y’all!

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Learn more about doctored cake mixes, the theme of this blog. 

For the master list of all doctored cake mix recipes on this site, visit Doctored Cake Mix Recipes, Master List. 

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About the Author

Janice Thompson is an author, baker, and all-around mischief maker! She has overcome a host of baking catastrophes, including a toppled wedding cake, to learn more about the baking process. Janice has published over 150 books for the Christian market but particularly enjoys writing recipes and baking devotions. To learn more about Janice or to drop her a note, visit her About the Author page.