I am having a curious george birthday party for my daughter on Saturday. I would love to make a banana cake (banana flavor not shape). My problem is all the recipes I find use a cream cheese frosting which I agree would go much better then buttercream. So my question is can you decorate and pipe with cream cheese icing or should I just use buttercream and it won't taste as good.

i've had no problem piping with cream cheese icing before.

I also have had problems with the cream cheese icing recipes that I have used in the past, to soft. I do make a banana cake with buttercream icing and to everyone that has had it, I have had no complaints.

I use DreamWhip in the icing and it really stabalizes well. Thanks to Indydeb!

BTW, I would love to have a delish banana cake recipe. Willing to share?

I use the one in the Wilton Tiered Cakes book, someone asked for a banana cake and was familiar with banana cake and loved this recipe.

some of the icings i have made with cream cheese have been kind of soft so I always throw meringue powder in them if they are not firm enough so they harden up a little more

I made a banana cake at Christmas with vanilla bean swiss meringue buttercream, and people are STILL raving about it. And I had no trouble piping with the stuff, either.

Here are a few. I've used the decorator's cream cheese many times & it's great. Still waiting to try Earlene's.

http://cakecentral.com/cake_recipe-6877-148-Cream-Cheese-Frosting-crusting.html

http://cakecentral.com/cake_recipe-4153-175-Decorators-Cream-Cheese-Frosting.html

http://www.earlenescakes.com/icings.htm (scroll down just a little)