Weekend Bakes: Banoffee Pie Cupcakes

Banoffee pie is one of my favourite desserts and I have been meaning to get them into cupcake form for a while. So when Kat Buckley , aka The Baking Explorer made a batch of delicious looking banoffee cupcakes and we happened to have a few over ripe bananas I knew how I was going to spend my afternoon.

We seem to have had a bit of a run of bananas that were ripening far too quickly, hence the two weeks running of banana-related recipes!

Having made the banana loaf the week before, I already had a good idea of what was going to go into my mix and used light brown sugar and butter as opposed to caster sugar and margarine.

The batter smelled lovely and banana-y and there was a lovely sugary aroma when they were baking. I was a little disappointed when they came out of the oven because every single one of the cupcakes had sank. The mixture made about 16 cupcakes so I'd put 12 in my gas oven and the rest in the electric oven and, as you can see, they all sank so I think this must have been a problem with the mixture rather than the ovens. I'm thinking maybe the bananas were too heavy for my usual, light sponge mixture?

However, I was not to be deterred: the middles were coming out anyway so I could fill them with lovely sweet toffee sauce. I did cheat a bit on the sauce. We had some ready-made toffee sauce in the cupboard and I opted to use that instead of making my own and perhaps having a lot left over.

The usual topping for a banoffee pie is lovely thick whipped cream but because I wanted the cupcakes to last a few days I chose to top mine with buttercream but I think this worked ok. It gave a different flavour and texture being heavier and sweeter than whipped cream but as it was on a cupcake I think that was allowed.

The cupcakes were then topped with grated chocolate and were ready to eat.

Banana and toffee is such a fantastic combination, so when you take that first bite and you get the lovely moist banana-y cake mixed with the smooth toffee sauce, you know you're on to a winner! I think this would have worked as a 'naked' cupcake with a dollop of whipped cream or buttercream on the side.

The only thing lacking with these cupcakes was the biscuit element. Kat added Speculoos to her batter to get a biscuit flavour. I did think about crumbling some biscuit on the top with the chocolate but I didn't want it to go soft. Maybe I need to experiment with a  biscuit base at the bottom of the cupcake case! After all it is all about the buttery biscuit base... 

Recipe:

For the Cake:

6oz soft light brown sugar

6oz unslated butter, softened

3 eggs

6oz self raising flour

2 ripe bananas, mushed

For the middle:

toffee sauce of your choosing

For the buttercream:

400g icing sugar

100g unsalted butter, softened

a few tablespoons of milk

To top:

- chocolate to grate

Method:

- pre-heat oven to gas mark 4/170 degrees C

- line baking tins with cupcake cases

- cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy

- lightly beat the eggs then add them to the sugar mixture a bit at a time

- add the occasional tablespoon of flour to stop the mixture curdling

- add half of the remaining flour and fold in gently

- add the remaining flour and the mushed up banana, again folding in gently

- spoon into the cupcake cases about 2/3 full and pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes and 

  hope they don't sink!

- in the meantime, make the buttercream by mixing the butter and icing sugar, adding the 

  milk a bit at a time until you get a good piping consistency (soft enough to pipe, firm 

  enough for it to stay piped!)

- when the cupcakes are done, take them out of the oven and leave them to cool

- when fully cool take out the middles of the cupcakes with an apple corer or knife, fill 

  the holes with toffee sauce and then pop the removed cake back in

- top the cake with a swirl of buttercream then sprinkle over some grated chocolate

- stuff your face!

Vicky xx