Banana Chocolate Chip Protein Powder Cake

If you’re going to make a protein cake this holiday season, make it a good one. With 8g of protein per slice, this chocolate banana protein powder cake may not be the highest protein dessert on the block, but it’s one of the tastiest. It blends classic cake ingredients and techniques with protein powder to make a moist and delicious cake that should be a crowd pleaser.

This recipe was created by my wife, Vanessa, as a follow up to her Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Protein Cake. That recipe was inspired by her original Chocolate Pumpkin Bundt Cake, which was in turn inspired by Priya O’Shea’s (from Great British Bake Off Season 10) chocolate banana bundt cake.

Priya’s cake is one of my favorite things Vanessa’s baked. So I immediately requested a protein powder cake spin off.

How to Make a Protein Powder Cake

Well, it’s basically no different than baking a regular cake. You’ll see that this recipe calls for full fat butter, real brown and granulated sugar, and no “healthy alternatives” aside from the protein powder, fat free Greek yogurt, and maybe the mashed banana instead of more fat.

The biggest modification is the PEScience Select protein powder (vanilla flavored), which we use as a flour substitute for almost half of the all purpose flour from the original recipe.

Every protein powder is different, so I’m always hesitant to recommend using another type of protein powder. PEScience Select is a whey and casein blend, and I’ve found that you can use roughly one scoop to replace around 1/4 cup of all purpose flour. In this chocolate banana cake, that goes all the way up to three scoops replacing a little more than 3/4 cup flour.

That’s a big substitution. So if you’ve never tried any of my protein powder recipes to find a protein powder alternative, you might start with a smaller recipe. Something like my 3-ingredient protein powder pancakes or protein oatmeal bake might give you an idea how another protein powder works in my recipes without baking an entire cake.

And if you’re tempted to use our ratio to substitute more, I’d caution against it. If you replace too much flour, you’ll end up with a very tough and chewy cake. Remember, we’re making a protein powder cake that you could pass as a normal cake here!

If you’d like to make more modifications like substituting for the sugar, I’d be sure to go with something that substitutes 1:1 for sugar. Ideally it’s something that caramelizes like sugar as well.

That’s why I like using Swerve sweeteners in most of my Kinda Healthy baked goods. If your tummy agrees with erythritol, I would definitely check out their products. You can also use the brown sugar substitute for all kinds of savory recipes like my Firecracker ground chicken and ground chicken breakfast sausage.

There are other fat replacements I’ve used in the past, but one of the big ones is already in play here in mashed banana. Others might include apple sauce, canned pumpkin, and something like light butter. If you’re attempting to reduce the fat with replacements like these, I would start small (maybe 25%).

That said, try not to make any changes and substitute at your own risk.

We love using a slightly more elaborate bundt cake pan. It creates a beautiful cake that has tons of added texture from all the ridges, and I think its improved look alleviates the need for any decoration. That saves calories, time, and extra ingredients. But any bundt cake pan will get the job done.

Okay, that covers it. Be sure to check out my protein banana bread to use up the rest of your ripe bananas. You can even make protein French toast with it!

And if you have a question about this chocolate banana protein powder cake I forgot to cover, drop it in the comments below. Otherwise, enjoy your cake!