Banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Banana....one of everybody's favourites!

So, every Sunday night we have a family dinner at my parents' place. When I say 'we', I mean my husband and myself, Destructor, my younger sister and her fiance, and my mum and dad. It's something I look forward to as it's a really lovely way to end the week. We all have a good ol' chat, inevitably end up eating way too much (my mum is Italian and couldn't bear the thought of us going hungry, so we get overfed instead) and then roll home and into bed.

This week, I decided I was going to make cupcakes for dessert. And I decided I'd go with banana as it's my dad's favourite flavour. Rather than doing a buttercream, I thought I'd do cream cheese icing. It's pretty easy and very, very delicious. I'd say it's my favourite kind of topping after the marshmallow frosting. Om nom nom.

So, Destructor hits the hay and I'm off baking. Before I pop the cake mix in the bowl I grab two ripe bananas (about as ripe as the bananas above) and mash them. THEN I pop in everything else and give it a good stir.

Into the patty pans they go. A little fuller than usual, but I'm not worried. There's a little extra because of the bananas.

2/3rds full, as usual!

And, because these are banana flavoured, I'm using bright yellow patty pans. How fun!

These are so sweet! Unfortunately, Destructor got to the leftover patty pans and ate/smooshed them. Oh well! 

So, into the oven, and I rotate them after 7 minutes. I had the timer on for 12, but realistically, they got 16.

Meanwhile, I'm all over the cream cheese icing. I've made it a few times before, so I'm feeling pretty confident. That turns out to be my big downfall. Instead of measuring my ingredients, I just chuck in the cream cheese (two blocks) a bit of butter (no measuring, but probably 30g or so) and start whipping in the mix master. Then I start pouring in the icing mixture. It's about this point that I realise that things are NOT going to go to plan. So, I need to up the stakes. In goes some vanilla and some mixed spice. If the texture isn't going to be perfect, it needs to taste good at the very least.

5 minutes later and it's horrible. Thick and goopy. Not holding any semblance of a shape. And in terms of taste, it's only okay. There's this weird floury after taste and my teeth feel gritty. I hang my head and go check a recipe. To my smallest relief I was supposed to use icing mixture (as opposed to pure icing sugar), but that still doesn't stop the little voice in my head saying 'it still tastes a little like cornflour...'

Okay, so I need a plan b. You always need a plan b. In my Religion classes (because in my non-baking life I teach Religious Education in a Catholic school...don't worry, I'm not about to get preachy!), I tell the kids that plan b in the bible always seems to be murder. King David can't get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba to cover up his adultery? Has him killed. Solomon can't get two women to stop arguing over a baby? Kill the baby. Sodom and Gomorrah full of sin and won't listen to angels? Kill them all! So you see my point. You need a plan b. However, when it comes to baking, you can't really kill anybody unless they're the one that ruined your recipe. And since I'm the idiot who screwed it up, I'm not about to kill myself. The price of our family honour isn't that high. So plan b is sticking it in the fridge. The whole, huge, hideous bowl of it.

I only have myself to blame for this....

So, about 10 tense minutes later I grab it out. It's thickened up, but not enough to be piped with. Damn. So I put in more (yes, you read that correctly...more) icing mixture and shove it back in the fridge.

More time goes past and out it comes. It's actually workable now. And the taste has somewhat developed...more mixed spice, less cornflour. If nothing else can be said for this frosting, it's that it's silky smooth. So I decide to go ahead with it.

I bought a new piping tip this week (a Wilton 1M) so I'm going to give it a crack. Apparently, the icing comes out like soft serve! Sounds like a bit of fun to me!

The icing does come out like soft serve, however, the texture isn't great. It's okay. But, they look cute. I top them with a little candy banana, some silver sanding sugar and voila!

So cute that a family of monkeys turned up shortly after this photo was taken...

Something else I was aching to try out were the cupcake boxes that I bought a couple of months ago. Lucky for me, a friend of mine was popping in later in the day and I could give them the gift of cupcakes! Hooray! This is how they looked all boxed:

Nawrrrr!

So, all in all, not the most successful session. However, I did learn some stuff:
1. You can add banana to the vanilla cake mix and it will work. 2 bananas is perfect.
2. Follow the recipe for cream cheese icing or you'll regret it.

Time: Had I followed the damn icing recipe, I would have knocked this over in less than hour.

Post Script: My husband ate one in the afternoon and loved it, but didn't want another after dinner...said they were too rich. The friends who I gave the box of cupcakes to loved them. My sister ate one, which, while it doesn't sound like much, actually is, as she's on a diet (and is doing great!). I ate one and didn't hate it. Mum ate half of one and didn't say anything, which means she didn't love it, but didn't hate it either. Dad said the icing was too soft, but went for a second one, so the cake was clearly a winner.

Lesson learned - will not try to make cream cheese icing without the recipe!!