Banana Cupcakes

It should be no secret to anyone that knows me well that I absolutely love bananas. I am obsessed with them! For anyone that frequents my blog, you have probably gathered by now, that cupcakes are one of my favorite things to bake. Yes, I am down with the cupcake fad, and I pretty much always have been. I am sorry to say, but I just love cupcakes. I know a lot of people hate them with a burning passion, but they are adorable.

Today for y'all, I have a banana cupcake/banana muffin ( I use that loosely and you'll see why)  with a caramel cream cheese icing, caramel drizzle, and topped off with nilla wafer crumbles and a half of a nilla wafer.

Hungry Yet?

Let's get into it already then! I had started to take photos of baking the batter and then I just stopped, I am super bad about that. I will post the two-three pictures I did take of mixing the batter at the beginning stages though. 

I call these, banana cupcake/muffins because the texture of the "cake" is more of a muffin texture, but the icing and toppings is what makes them a cupcake to me. The batter does bake a bit heavier such as a muffin but it isn't totally dense like a muffin, the actual "cake" itself is still on the fluffy/airy side, just a bit heavier than your average cake. You could definitely get rid of the icing and add almonds or walnuts to these and make them into a banana nut muffin. I would top them with a baked streusul topping if I were doing that. 

Here is a photo of the texture of the "cake"/muffin.

For this recipe, I actually through it together myself on a whim. It made enough for 2 dozen.

Ingredients: 

3 cups All Purpose Flour

1 1/4 tsp Baking Soda 

1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup almond milk
1/2 cup sour cream

Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter with a kitchen mixer using paddle attachment. Add sugars and beat for a few minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time while continue to beat at low speed and vanilla. The mixture will be silky smooth – add bananas and sour cream at lower speed.

Mix in the flour and almond milk alternatively, beginning and ending with the flour.

Fill into cupcake pans (fill up about 2/3-full, you should get approximately 24 cupcakes), bake them for about 18-minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

While they are baking, you can get the icing ready.

The icing is my basic cream cheese icing ( I Just love it and haven't found another base I enjoy as much as this one). It is 4 oz cream cheese, 1 stick of butter, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and 4 cups of powdered sugar. Everything just gets mixed with a paddle attachment together. You want to make sure the cream cheese and butter are room temperature.

After everything is mixed well, add in about 1/4-1/2 cup of just store bought caramel. I used ice cream topping salted caramel and it turned out amazing. Add however much you'd like depending on how sweet you want your icing. 

When your cupcakes are done baking, allow them to cool completely so the icing doesn't melt off.

Once they are cooled, ice them, drizzle them with more caramel, and top them off with crushed nilla wafers and/ or a nilla wafer.