Going Bananas

I have to be honest...

......I normally buy bananas to eat 1 or 2 and then wait for them to go bad so I can bake with them : )

I love banana bread, banana cupcakes, and banana pancakes. What's not to love? So today I'm giving you my world famous banana cupcake recipe. It's not mine and it's not famous but that sounds better, doesn't it? It will be famous one day and it's from my best friend, K.

So without further ado...BANANA CUPCAKES!

Ingredients:

½ pound (2 sticks) butter or margarine softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 large I usually use 2.5)
1 ¾ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
2/3 teaspoon baking soda
5 tablespoons buttermilk (regular milk or soy milk can be substituted. I've even used vanilla flavored before)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Prep your cupcake pans
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Add mashed bananas, mixing thoroughly.
Sift dry ingredients and add to butter and egg mixture.
Stir until flour has been incorporated completely.
Add buttermilk and vanilla.
Mix for 1 minute.
Pour batter into the prepared cupcake pans.
Set on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

***Helpful Tip***
Cool in pans on a rack for 10 minutes. Then take from cupcake pan and cool on rack for 2 hours. You really need to wait until they're completely cooled before icing them since the icing needs to then be refrigerated and it will just get messy if the cupcakes are crazy hot while being frosted.

And now for the best part....the CREAM CHEESE ICING! I do not discriminate against store-made frosting but if you want to make your own this is pretty easy!

Ingredients:

4 oz of cream cheese, softened (1/2 of a block)
½ stick of butter or margarine, softened.
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 ½ cups powdered sugar

Instructions:

Cream together the cream cheese and margarine.
Add the vanilla.
Slowly add the powdered sugar and beat until it is fully incorporated.

TA-DA! You're done! Now if you want to get snazzy, transfer all your icing to a ziploc bag, cut a small corner off, and you've got your own icing bag! I like to do swirls in the middle as you can see. Remember these cupcakes need to be kept refrigerated.

Make it special by putting something edible on top! This is a chopped walnut but I also like doing dried banana chips or even a small chocolate chip.

If you'd like to make this into a cake the batter recipe is exactly the same but bake it in 2 9" round pans for 25-35 minutes depending on your oven. Then double the frosting recipe and you're good to go. A nice touch is to make sure you have 1-2 firm bananas, frost the first layer of the cake, then slice the firm banana and place it all over the top of the frosted bottom layer. Place the top layer on and ice it up. YUM!

Please enjoy and let me know if you make them! Do you have any go-to recipes with fruits? I'm looking for a good pie recipe!