Banana Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

I have been in a major winter funk.  It's too cold to do anything.   I absolutely do not like cold weather, I don't understand people who take vacations to the cold mountains to ski.  Do they not know about beaches and sun and sand and vitamin D and what it does for your life?  Apparently not.  So to break myself out of the funk yesterday I decided it's time to start baking again.  I had all the ingredients for this recipe on hand so I went with it.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Here is what you'll need:
2-2/3 cups All Purpose Flour
1 1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/2 sticks butter
1 cup light brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup buttermilk

Directions
Firest pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees 
Then whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt and set aside for later

Next in a large mixing bowl (or in your new Kitchen Aid mixer that you got for Christmas!!), beat butter using paddle attachment. Add sugar and beat for a few minutes.

Add your eggs, one at a time while continuing to beat on low, then add vanilla. Add mashed bananas on low as wel.

Mix in the flour and buttermilk alternatively, beginning and ending with the flour.

Fill into cupcake pans about 2/3 full.  It is important to try and make them all the same size, a few of mine turned out a little more brown than I would have liked since they weren't all exactly the same size.  I am in love with this batter filler that my brother and sister-in-law bought me for Christmas.  Next time I will be using it properly! 

Bake the cupcakes for approximately 18-minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  A tooth pick or this cute handy tool!

The cupcakes can be stored in room temperature for up to 2 days!

Recipe yeilds 18 cupcakes.



 

Cherry Chocolate Cake Balls

I'm especially proud of these cake balls because it was my first attempt at making them and I used my own recipe.  It's really simple.


There are two ways to make these cake balls.  I used a Baby Cakes Cake Pops Maker:

This method is super simple.  I used a Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe- Devil's Food cake mix and followed the recipe on the box EXCEPT for the water, I used maraschino cherry juice in place of that.  Once the batter is complete you just pour the batter into the baby cakes maker and it takes only a few minutes for each to cook.  For some I cut up a maraschino cherry into fours ( I know that's small but so are the cake balls) and pushed a piece into the batter before I closed the lid.  After they're done cooking I let them cool and then covered them in white chocolate.  

I always use two things to melt chocolate, Crisco butter flavored shortening and Wilton's Candy Melts:

I used about half the bag of chocolate pieces in a microwavable bowl, add about 2 tablespoons of the Crisco and microwave for about a minute, stir it up and continue to melt in 20 second intervals as needed.  I also have a Babycakes Chocolatier Mini Dipper

This is obviously not needed but really helps keep the chocolate warm while dipping.  Since this was my first time, they didn't come out looking as pretty as I originally envisioned.  This is because I dipped them in the white chocolate and then put them in mini cupcake cups.  In the future I've decided to save Styrofoam so that I can use that and tooth picks to elevate the pops until they dry.  An easy way to make sure the tooth pick sticks in the pop is to dip it in chocolate before you stick it in the pop, let that dry and then cover the pop in chocolate.  You of course can also use sticks like the ones pictured above to make them into true "cake pops."

The second method, if you do not have a cake pop maker, is as follows:

First make the cake as usual in a regular cake pan.  Once it cools put it in a bowl and crumble it up.  Add icing to the bowl little by little.  The first time I tried this method I added the entire can of icing and the cake/icing mixture was too moist.  Add just enough icing to bind the cake together so that you can roll it into balls.  Roll the mixture into balls the size of golf balls or slightly smaller.  If you're going to make cake pops dip the stick in chocolate and then insert into cake ball, or tooth picks into chocolate and then the cake ball and let cool in refrigerator for at least an hour.  I would work on about 10 cake balls at a time.  The first time I did this I took all of them out and didn't work fast enough, by the time I got to cake ball 20, they had thawed some and were hard to work with.

This was an okay first attempt but I have an obsession with cupcakes and cake pops, so I'll be back.  It's easy to play with recipes and to decorate for different occasions!

Jello Shot Mini Cupcake

Ingredients

For jello shot cupcakes
1 pkg. white cake mix
1 cup boiling water
1 pkg. (3 oz.) Jello Gelatin, any red flavor (I used strawberry)
1 cup Malibu coconut rum

1 can of Cool Whip

Instructions

I used mini cupcake tins but you can also use little condiment cups.  

Make the white cake as instructed, then poke holes in the top of the cupcake with a fork.

Boil 1 cup of water, stir in jello until dissolved, add 1 cup of Malibu coconut rum then spoon generously over cupcakes and let cool.  Then top with cool whip and enjoy!