Who doesn’t love the combination of banana and peanut butter?
For my nephew’s graduation open house I decided to make a variety of cupcakes for him. One of the inspirations I had was to make a cupcake that tasted like moist banana bread and pair it with my Tiger Butter Frosting that is a Swiss meringue buttercream flavored with white chocolate and peanut butter. It was divine…it had the perfect balance of flavors! I attempted to test dipping it in chocolate as well but decided it was too sweet and the original recipe was perfect.
Needless to say, the cupcakes were a hit at the open house…actually everyone was eating the cupcakes instead of the cake. I even seen a few people go back up for a second and third cupcake…lol. So I guess you could call them a success.
I work 10 hour days at my job so making cupcakes for an event like this I had to prepare ahead of time. I researched a bit and tested freezing cupcakes to see how they would hold up and see if they would stay moist after a few weeks. I found this technique worked well and I was able to make cupcakes a couple weeks in advance on my days off and they tasted exactly the same and were still super moist.
After cupcakes have cooled completely wrap them individually in plastic wrap and place in ziplock bags or in an airtight container, place in freezer. To unthaw, remove from freezer and unwrap…place on a cooling wrap for a few hours till cupcakes come to room temperature before frosting. I also made my buttercream a day ahead and placed in the fridge. The frosting also has to come to room temp before you can pipe it. Frosting takes only around an hour to warm up enough to re-whip in the blender once more before piping. Then you are all set to decorate your cupcakes after that. Easy prep so you don’t have to stress the night before baking or the day of an event.
I took some inspiration for the banana cupcake recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction and tweaked it by adding some chopped walnuts and pairing it with my frosting recipe. Normally I like to adjust recipes more to my liking but she did such a good job that I kept it pretty much true to her recipe- Bravo Sally! She has a wonderful blog and some amazing recipes, if you haven’t visited her site you should check it out.