There’s no shortage of ripe bananas frozen in our freezer.  Mike buys a bundle, assumes I’m eating half, and before we know it that bright yellow is now a speckled shade of brown.  Off to the freezer they go!

The last few times I thawed a bunch, they ended up as cupcakes.  I’ve now used the same recipe twice and have decided that it’s worth sharing.  You may recognize these cupcakes from my previous b-day post; pink, fluffy, + paired perfectly with macarons.  They are easy to make and with the right pipping tip, you can easily add a nice floral touch to your frosting.

I stumbled upon this recipe on centercutcook.com

…ingredients…
[yields 12-15 cupcakes]
1c sugar
1/2c unsalted butter [softened]
2 eggs
1/2tsp vanilla extract
1/2c sour cream
2 ripe bananas [cut into small pieces]
1/2c flour
1tsp baking soda
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt

pre heat oven to 350º | line muffin tin w/ paper liners
in a mixer cream butter + egg until fluffy | add eggs 1 @ a time | combine w / vanilla
mix in sour cream + bananas [ensure everything is mixed in well]
in large bowl sift flour +baking soda + cinnamon + nutmeg + salt
add dry ingredients to wet | mix until smooth
fill muffin cup about 3/4’s full
bake for 18-20mins [until a toothpick, when inserted in the centre of the cupcake, comes out clean]
cool completely on a rack | start making your frosting

…peanut butter + cream cheese frosting …
10 oz cream cheese [room temp]
1/2c unsalted butter [room temp]
5c powdered sugar [I usually stop at 3 or 4 cups]
2/3c creamy peanut butter

in a mixer combine cream cheese + butter until fluffy
add powdered sugar [1 cup at a time]
add peanut butter | mix to combine
pipe frosting onto cooled cupcakes

To get this cupcake design all you need is a large star pipping tip [1M]…well that’s what I used because that’s all I had on hand.  To be more specific, decorating sites suggest using a 2D tip, but I think you can achieve the same effect with any tip so long as it’s large and jagged.

fill a pipping bag with frosting
hold the bag perpendicular to the cupcake surface
w/ even pressure starting @ the centre of cupcake squeeze the frosting in a clockwise or counter clockwise spiral direction making sure to overlap the circles as the you move outwards [so that there’s no cupcake showing]
continue until the surface is covered and you reach the edge of the cupcake surface
ta-da…and now you have a rose cupcake!

hope you devour this recipe as much as much as I did!

-YUM!