Monday, November 9, 2009

Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Chocolate Frosting

I have not baked anything in what feels like forever, and had a few bananas sitting on the counter getting all mushy and brown. Normally, I would have made my Grandma's Banana Bread, but I was in the mood to try something a little different! I thought cupcakes sounded so good, since I have a tiny bit of an obsession with them. I found several recipes for banana cupcakes, and honestly I chose these because I had all of the ingredients on-hand. They came out so good! Very dense, but definitely cupcake-y and not too muffin-like.

Banana Cupcakes
From: marthastewart.com

Ingredients:

Makes 12

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (about 4 ripe bananas)
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar*, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
2. Make a well in center of flour mixture. In well, mix together butter, mashed bananas, eggs, and vanilla. Stir to incorporate flour mixture (do not overmix)**. Dividing evenly, spoon batter into muffin cups.
3. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan; cool completely on a wire rack.

*I never have plain white sugar unless I'm buying ingredients to bake, so I used a combination of Sugar in the Raw (1/2 c) and Splenda (1/4 c) and it came out great. I've never baked with the raw sugar before, but I think I will again!

**The key to keeping them light is to stop mixing the second the dry ingredients become wet. Maybe about 30 seconds mixing with a spoon. Do not bust out your fancy-schmancy stand mixer for this recipe...do it all by hand!!



These cupcakes were paired with Honey-Cinnamon frosting, which sounds delicious, but was so not what I wanted at the time. I was trying to think of what would go good with banana, and peanut butter and chocolate came to mind. I found a few recipes, all a little different. Some used real peanut butter, some peanut butter chips. Some used chocolate chips and some melted bakers chocolate. One was true chocolate buttercream with peanut butter chips folded in. So, this is what I came up with, because I had all of this stuff in the house :) It tasted like I melted a Reeces Peanut Butter cup, whipped it back up and piped it on top of the cupcakes. I was pretty happy with myself!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Frosting


Ingredients:

6 oz. semi-sweet Bakers Chocolate (6 squares)
1/2 c unsalted butter
1/2 smooth peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
up to 1 c powdered sugar

Directions:

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt chocolate and butter (heat on 30 second intervals then stir until melted. Do not over heat). While still hot, stir in peanut butter and vanilla until peanut butter is melted. Cool in refrigerator for at least 10 minutes.

Once cool, add powdered sugar in 1/3 c increments and beat on med-high until you reach desired consistency and thickness.

Frost cupcakes and Enjoy!!

3 comments:

Lauren Lea Warren said...

OH MY GOSH these sound decadent. I will definitely need to try them!

Jen said...

Yum yum! Look at that piping too. Very nice! =)

Veronica said...

Ha...thanks Jen! I think it's b/c it was so thick ;)