Foster's Banana

If you know me, you know that I hate bananas.  The only thing I hate more than bananas are stinky, smelly, old bananas.  Well, my lovely husband eats bananas every day.  Or so he thinks.  He buys bananas with the intention of eating them, but instead they sit on the counter and get stinkier and stinkier and stinkier. 

Recently, I became overly annoyed by the rotten bananas sitting on the counter, and mentioned my frustration repeatedly.  Not wanting to waste them, Steve mentioned that I should make banana's foster cupcakes.  (He absolutely loves some banana's foster.)

I found a recipe after playing with the idea of making up my own, and I couldn't have been happier!  Steve helped me with the banana's foster part - and we had a lot of fun making these delicious cupcakes.

While I prepared the flour, eggs, and general cupcake supplies, 

 Steve prepared the banana's foster on the stove.  (Sliced banana's, brown sugar, cinnamon, rum - on fire on the stove!)

The banana's foster is mixed right into the cupcake batter - so yummy!

While those baked, we prepared the frosting supplies. 

 This was a cream cheese, cinnamon & rum buttercream with bourbon vanilla.  YUM!

 Sifted powdered sugar.

 Everything is ready to go once the cupcakes are cooled!

So yummy - one of the best frostings I've made!

I really think these would be great for a beach wedding - the swirl I did kind of looks like a shell, doesn't it?  And the color, with the flecks of vanilla, is so much like sand.  So pretty.

With the leftover banana's foster reduction, Steve really wanted to make a drizzle on the top.  So we did!

I don't like bananas - but I LOVE these cupcakes!!!

RED velvet, WHITE & BLUEberry :)

Happy Independence Day, everyone!  I was so excited when I got these little cuties in the mail the other day:

I ordered these here:   http://www.jbprince.com/table-service/clear-push-up-large.asp

So I decided that these would be PERFECT for the 4th of July - I could use blueberries, strawberries, white icing, etc.  Then I had someone request Red Velvet cupcakes for an event later this month, so I decided to try out a recipe and make RED velvet, WHITE & BLUEberry cake push-ups!!!

First I needed to butter and flour my pans.  A trick I've learned is for chocolate cake, you can use butter and cocoa powder so you don't have that white dust on your cake when it's done.

Next, I whisked the flour, salt and unsweetened, dutch-processed cocoa powder.  (You might guess that no, I did not use the good stuff to flour my pans - that was regular Hershey's.)

This recipe called for all whisking, all the time - first the eggs and sugar:

And then the vanilla and food coloring:

I was so in love with the color of this batter!  (1/2 tsp of gel food coloring)

I made really thin layers of cake in 4 pans, had enough batter leftover for 6 cupcakes, too!

While the cakes were baking, I took a minute to laugh at my collection of supplies.

This is not even half of all of my stuff.  I need a bigger kitchen!

I used a circle cutter to cut out circles for the cake push-ups, and cut out some mini-stars too.  (Notice the butter coming to room temperature in the background - time for frosting!)

I did take any frosting pictures but I made a basic cream cheese frosting, since most people like that on their red velvet cakes. I've actually never had red velvet cake before!  How about that?  Here are some shots of the finished product:

 And cupcakes, too:

 Guess what I did with all of the cake batter scraps?  That's right - I made cake balls!  I crumbled all of the leftover cake scraps and mixed it with a little bit of the cream cheese frosting.  I then rolled about 22 balls and stuck them into a freezer safe gallon baggie - will make some yummy cake pops soon!