Cheesecake Stuffed Banana Pecan Bundt Cake With Caramel Glaze

Quite the title on this cake, eh?

Yeah, I think I've proven my point about me not being able to come up with cool and catchy names for recipes. 

Anyway.... in case the title didn't give it away, this little morsel of tastiness has bananas, pecans, caramel, cream cheese, and all sorts of other things you know you want to be eating. 

There is so many layers of delicious things your taste buds will be doing back flips. 

Plus... it is super moist.

Plus... it looks pretty impressive. 

And, as we all know, moist cake + pretty + tasty = perfection.

Cheesecake Stuffed Banana Pecan Bundt Cake With Caramel Glaze

Ingredients

Cake

3/4 cup pecans, toasted & coarsely chopped (divided)

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

pinch salt

1 cup butter, room temp

1 1/3 cup brown sugar

1 Tbsp vanilla

2 eggs

4 large, ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)

1 cup Greek yogurt, plain

Cheesecake Layer

1 - 8 oz brick cream cheese, room temp

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

Caramel Glaze

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 Tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup icing sugar

Directions

Prepare cake - Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 12 cup bundt pan with cooking spray, set aside.

Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the pecans into the bottom of the bundt pan.

In a mixing bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, beat the butter until it is smooth. Beat in brown sugar, vanilla, eggs, and banana.

Alternately beat the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients with the yogurt until just combined.

Set aside batter while you make the cheesecake mixture.

Prepare cheesecake - In a mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides as necessary. Beat in brown sugar until creamy. Beat in egg, cinnamon, and vanilla. 

Carefully spoon half of the cake batter into the bundt pan.

Top with the cheesecake mixture.

Spoon the rest of the cake batter over the cheesecake. Top with the remaining 1/4 cup of pecans. 

Bake at 350 for approximately one hour. Top should be golden brown and toothpick inserted near center should come out clean. (At the one hour mark mine wasn't done but the top was getting too dark. I simply tented some tinfoil over the top and left it for another 15 minutes until the toothpick came out clean.)

Let sit for 10 minutes. Carefully run a butter knife around the edges to loosen the cake and then invert it onto a wire rack to cool.

Now, this looks beautiful and you could serve it as is.

BUT.... let's take it a step further, shall we?

Prepare caramel sauce - In a small saucepan over medium heat, whisk together butter, brown sugar, and milk. Cook and stir until mixture starts to bubble then continue cooking and stirring for one full minute.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. (Careful it sometimes bubbles up)

Beat in the icing sugar using beaters. (Again, be careful, it's hot!)

Drizzle sauce over cake slowly, making sure it drizzles down the inside and outside of the cake. (Cake doesn't have to be warm when you glaze it. You can glaze it when the cake is cold.)

Let cake cool completely before serving. (You can serve it warm BUT I find the cheesecake layer tastes better when it is chilled.)

The cheesecake layer is hard to see because I used brown sugar. If you want to see a brighter ribbon of cheesecake then you can use regular sugar instead. 

Personally, I like the taste of the brown sugar better.

Caramel and pecans and bananas are a match made in heaven.

 

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