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Mariel here. When I was a wee middle-schooler, my best friend at the time used to love making sweet breads. Banana bread in particular was her forte and we spent many an afternoon whipping up a double-batch in the kitchen and then snacking on our own personal loaves while playing Donkey Kong or modeling the newest sweaters from J. Crew. Ahh, to be 13 again.
I haven’t done much banana-based cooking since those lazy adolescent days, but when I was assigned to the Cairns Manor blog for this month’s Secret Recipe Club, I stumbled across a recipe for a Banana Cream Cheese Bread with Chocolate Chips. While I was eager to recreate her recipe, I’ve consumed enough banana bread in my lifetime to kill a chimp, so I decided to make cupcakes instead…since those are obviously totally different. I skipped the cream cheese filling and instead topped my cuppies with chocolate cream cheese frosting.
In the spirit of breakfast for dessert – or vice versa – I’d imagine someone, somewhere eats these pre-9AM (hello, bananas + cream cheese = breakfast). I say go for it, embrace your inner teenager. They may even leave you with a blemish.
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Banana Cupcakes with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
Makes 12 cupcakes
Ingredients for the Cupcakes:
1¼ cup of sifted cake-flour, not self-rising – $2.99
¾ cup of granulated sugar – stock
½ cup buttermilk (or you can sub in ½ cup low-fat milk + ½ tablespoons vinegar, whisked and left to sit for five minutes) – stock
2 large bananas, mashed + ½ banana for garnish
2 large eggs – stock
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract – stock
1½ teaspoon baking powder – stock
1/2 teaspoon baking soda – stock
¼ teaspoon salt – stock
6 Tablespoons of unsalted butter, melted – stock
Ingredients for the Frosting:
8-oz package of 1/3 less fat cream cheese, room temperature -$1.69
1 cup confectioner’s sugar – stock
¼-cup cocoa – stock
Directions assuming “well-stocked” kitchen: $4.68
Cost per cupcake: $0.39
Directions for the Cupcakes:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
2. Dig a little well in the center of flour mixture. In that divot, mix together the butter, mashed bananas, buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. Use a wooden spoon to incorporate flour mixture but don’t over-mix. Dividing evenly, spoon batter into muffin cups.
3. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, about 22 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan; cool completely on a wire rack.
Directions for the Frosting:
1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the cream cheese, confectioner’s sugar and cocoa. Frost the cupcakes when they’re totally cool and garnish – as desired – with slices of banana
Yum yum yum! My pregnancy craving will be satisfied tonight!
Anything with banana and chocolate has my name written all over it! Great recipe!
So theeeeese are the banana cupcakes you tweeted about. Looks faaaaantastic!
Love these look amazing!!!! gloria
These are lovely! I make yoghurt, banana choc chip muffins but these with the frosting win hands down!
Have a super week.
🙂 Mandy
Bravo! The frosting looks completely decadent, would it be too much to make the cream cheese filling and your frosting for the top? I may have to do some side by side taste testing!
Bananas? Chocolate? Cream cheese? Absolutely decadent. Great SRC post
Bananas and chocolate in a cupcake…or should I say muffins so I can have them for breakfast?
Oh my! These are scrumptious! I would eat them for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner and snack – all of them — in that order.
I’ve had a bit of banana bread before, but never with frosting. This looks like a recipe that needs to be tried 🙂
I can see why you chose this recipe, chocolate heaven 🙂 Awesome to be in the Secret Recipe Club with you. Here is my post from group C – http://su.pr/2rtACr
We can eat these for breakfast right? They have bananas in them it is all good. Thanks for sharing with us.
They look great! I love making these!! Banana Cupcakes are some of my favorite, and I always put Banana chips on the tops!
Glad to be in Group C with you as well!
Oh man, these look great! I love the SRC!
Beautiful clicks.., my kids love banana bread, I have never made banana cup cakes, they look delicious, Glad to be with you in SRC
hello I just wanted to know if I can substitute the buttermilk with milk or maybe yogurt .thanks
Milk would be your best bet – but you can make homemade buttermilk (or something very similar) by whisking together ½ cup low-fat milk + ½ tablespoons white vinegar and letting it sit for 5 mins
ok thank you very much
I didnt see baking soda in the ingredient list but it was mentioned in the directions. Should it be in there?
1/2 teaspoon baking soda, sorry about that Cheryl! Somehow it didn’t make the journey from my written notes to the online version!
I can’t wait to try this recipe! One question…how ripe should the banana be at?
Hope you like it, Debbie. And as for the ripeness of the bananas – they should be ripe enough to mash easily. For the piece of banana used as garnish, it should be unblemished. Happy baking!