OK, third banana recipe in one week, so obviously I bought WAY too many bananas in the last week or two. The result? Loads of brown bananas that the kids wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole. What’s a mom to do? Bake. Bananas work so well in baking, they become almost caramel-like when cooked and make everything extra moist. However, I won’t be buying anymore, anytime soon, we are all banana’d out! This recipe is from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, which usually never fails. These were moist and tasty, but too sweet for me, mostly due to the frosting. Maybe I’ve been living in Japan too long? Maybe I’ve gone bananas…yeah, that was lame. Again I had to half the frosting. I also added salt and vanilla to temper the sweet a bit.
Banana and Chocolate Cupcakes
Calorie estimate: 230/cupcake as prepared, 304/cupcake according to recipe as written
makes 12
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
a scant 3/4 cup sugar
1 T baking powder
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
a pinch of salt
5 T unsalted butter, room temp
1/2 cup whole milk
2 eggs
1 ripe banana, peeled and mashed
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 325 F
Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, salt and butter in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) and beat on slow speed until you get a sandy consistency and everything is combined.
Slowly pour the milk into the flour mixture, beating well until all the ingredients are well mixed. Add the eggs and beat well (scrape any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula).
Stir in the mashed banana by hand until evenly dispersed.
Spoon the batter into the paper cases until two-thirds full and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, or until light golden and the cake bounces back when touched. Let the cupcakes cool slightly in the pan before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
When the cupcakes are cold, spoon the chocolate frosting on top and finish with chocolate shavings.
chocolate frosting
2 1/3 cups confectioners’ sugar sifted
6 1/2 T unsalted butter, room temp
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
2 T whole milk
2 pinches salt (that’s my technical term)
a little bit of vanilla
