banana cupcakes

A batter is prepared that incorporates real banana fruit that hasn't gone black and fortified with banana liqueur. 

Cups are prepared with ground almond to guarantee cupcake-release.

Commercial frosting is fortified with banana liqueur and piped for a topping. 

The batter does not follow a recipe. Rather, my favorite things are included, cinnamon and a tiny dash of ground clove. Things that cupcakes traditionally require, egg, banana liqueur in place of vanilla extract, two whole bananas smashed in their peel and squeezed out as toothpaste. 

One egg is beaten with one half cup refined white sugar. A dash of salt is added to the mixture. Three ounces of vegetable oil is beaten into the egg and sugar mixture. That is, approximately 3/4 of 1/2 measuring cup vegetable oil.  See, four fourths of one half cup is four ounces. So three fourths of one half cup is three ounces.

MATHS !

The oil-judgement that I am using here is taken from the general instructions on boxed cake mixes. It appears one of the secrets to cakes is the use of vegetable oil rather than butter. Hey, you learn from whatever sources available. 

Pecans on impulse.

Flour is sifted by the half cup, the viscosity assessed as it proceeds. I am attempting to assimilate the lessons learned from the last banana cupcake fail, which appeared to be a batter too thin and over-leavened. Therefore, this batter will be thick.  

No cocoa this time. 

A single chemical leaven is used, here baking powder because I am assuming without actually testing that this mixture is not acidic. The baking powder is not added all at once. Batter is scooped out into another bowl in the amount that I think will fill one cupcake tray. Baking powder is added to the new bowl of batter leaving the reserve batter unadjusted with baking powder. I do not want the reserve portion sitting there waiting its turn with baking powder in it. I would rather wait until it is time to fill the cups to add the baking powder at the last minute. I am not sure this precaution is necessary, I just don't want to take any chances with it becoming active before I am ready. 

Whole almonds are ground in a coffee grinder. I don't much care for these things and it seems a good way to get rid of them. This is an experiment to see if powdered almond can replace flour in tray preparation for reliable cupcake-release. It worked beautifully.  The trays were liberally buttered and very liberally powdered with almond. 

Baked at 350℉ / 175℃ for ten minutes. Checked with a toothpick. Cooked an additional two minutes. So, twelve minutes total.

They tapped right out of the tray. Hurray!

Commercial icing because I'm sort of over it at this point and the kitchen is a mess. Plus I didn't want to break out half a pound of butter or a whole thing of Crisco. The commercial icing was thinned with the same banana liqueur that fortified the cupcakes. The icing was piped using a pastry bag fitted with a star tip. Okay, that's kind of fun. It used the whole doggone container of icing which goes to show ya something about piping bag fun or something. 

Lully, innit? 

There was the perfect amount of batter for 12 cupcakes, and the perfect amount of icing. Actually, I could have used a little more icing for whole-hearted icing extravagance.

The batter is delicious raw. That is how I knew I was on the right track. If they would only form nice little cupcake domes, which they did, and that filled my heart with joy and wonder. It's fun to watch them through the oven window when they're not spilling all over the place burning on the bottom of the oven, stinking up the whole house, setting off alarms.