Banana Cupcakes

I know my titles aren't that exciting, but the cupcakes sure can be. My inspiration for this cupcake was my mom. She reminded me of a treat (I think it might have been Hostess) that we would have on occasion called the banana flip. It was this spongy type cake (think Twinkie) wrapped kind of like a taco with this yummy banana flavored filling. So I thought I would attempt to duplicate my way. I was pretty far off the mark on this childhood treat but it was oh so tasty!

Banana Cupcakes

I thought I would start with a yellow cake mix (if I would have left it at that, it probably would have been similar in taste and texture), but I wanted to jazz it up a bit. I had been researching substitutes for eggs and oil for the cake mixes; I have already been changing the water to something different. In my research, I saw that you could exchange 1 banana for every egg in the recipe. Since my cake mix called for 3 eggs, I used 3 bananas. It also called for 1 cup of water, I chose to use milk. I left the oil the same, not wanting to change it all so I would know what worked and what might not. I used a square cupcake pan and a flower shaped silicone cupcake pan to put my cupcakes in. My results were a moist, delicious, amazing cupcake exploding with a fresh banana taste. Can we say, YUMMINESS!!!

I wanted to play around with the toppings/frosting a bit too. I made a delicious banana butter cream frosting (that tasted a whole lot like the filling from the childhood treat). I used chocolate flavored Almond Bark as a topping and also some yellow vanilla flavored Candy Melts. I even spread peanut butter on top of some before dipping it in the chocolate almond bark.

The "flower" in the foreground was covered in yellow candy melts. This was almost my favorite!

I played with the banana butter cream icing on the tops of these.

While it might have missed the mark on the treat we had as kids (and honestly who am I kidding, I had them as an adult, too), it was a BIG bonus on the new yummy treat. I loved the fact that it didn't use eggs which totally means I can eat the batter! Okay, maybe not eating the batter necessarily, but I am always running out of eggs and I always have overripe bananas (I make tons of banana bread because of this) so this was a nice alternative. I don't know that I would use the banana unless I wanted the banana flavor. For example I make some two ingredient brownies that I use a brownie mix (that is just one ingredient for me) and some pureed black beans and you don't taste the black beans at all. It might be nice though to see what the bananas would tasted like in a chocolate cake, too. For my family, this was a great recipe and one I will do again.

This square one has peanut butter spread on top before dipping it in chocolate and decorating it with yellow candy melts.

*********I forgot to put my recipe for my banana butter cream frosting recipe on here. How silly!! It is a simple recipe. 1 cup butter, 1 cup butter flavored Crisco, 1 package instant banana pudding mix, approximately 8 cups powdered sugar, approximately 2 TBSP milk.**********