Cheesecake Stuffed Banana Bread

Can you relate to my banana dilemma? Seems like I so much as bring them home that they start getting speckled. Within hours of spotting the first speckle the kids consider them overripe and they won’t touch them “with a 10-foot pole” (as my mom says). We all know where overripe bananas go — to banana heaven aka banana bread. 

There is something about a slice of warm, buttered banana bread that brings deep comfort like none other, right? But let’s be honest – banana bread isn’t that pretty to look at.

I recently needed to bring a breakfast-type dish to a potluck brunch and guess what was staring me in the eyes? That’s right, speckled, over-ripened bananas. Rather than making a classic loaf of banana bread, I decided to make it a little more decadent and that’s how this recipe came to be.

The addition of a generous, buttery streusel topping, a thick layer of cheesecake and swapping the traditional loaf pan for a 9″x13″ baking dish totally transformed our go-to banana bread – without skimping on the comfort factor!

Here’s what you’ll need for the banana bread:

• mashed ripened bananas
• oil
• eggs
• sugar
• flour
• lemon zest (my secret ingredient)
• salt

The cheesecake filling ingredients are:

• cream cheese
• sugar
• egg
• sea salt

And the streusel comes together with:

• sugar
• flour
• butter 
• sea salt

This recipe is another classic “dump and stir” just divided into 3 phases. Start by making the banana bread batter and cheesecake batter layering the cheesecake between to layers of banana bread batter.

Then top with the streusel topping (the best part in my opinion) and bake for 50-60 minutes.

The aroma that will fill your home as this bakes is one of my all-time faves. But my favorite part?? I just managed to turn “eating cheesecake for breakfast” into an acceptable – maybe even respectable decision ((thanks to stuffing it between two layers of banana bread!