Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Cupcakes

I finally got my icing piping kit.  Thanks Amazon!  This week was my dear friend, and former roommate, Kenze's birthday.  To celebrate we had a little shindig at our house.  I was put in charge of cupcakes.  I had Jeremy pick which recipe to do.  He chose the Chocolate Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting recipe from yourcupofcake.com  That was fine with me, considering that my favorite shake to get at the Malt Shoppe is their hot fudge banana shake with peanut butter.  He did have one addition he wanted in the recipe though.  He wanted me to put Reese's Peanut Butter Cups at the bottom of them.  I did so, and they turned out amazingly!  See for yourself:

The thing that is tricky about making these delicious cupcakes is that you want to eat them all the time.  We just started a Nicholls's family health challenge that Jeremy and I are bound and determined to win, and we can only have 4 sweets a week.  Having treats like this around the home is no good.  We're holding strong though, don't you worry.  Here's the recipe from yourcupofcake.com:

Cakes:

1 cup ripe bananas, mashed

½ cup oil

¼ cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 eggs

1 box Devil’s Food Cake Mix

Peanut Butter Buttercream:

¼ cup butter

8 oz cream cheese

1/3 cup peanut butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3-4 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

1.      Preheat oven to 340 degrees and line about 20 muffins tins with cupcake liners.

2.      In a large bowl, mash bananas (about three) using a fork to get rid of all large lumps. 

3.      Add oil, buttermilk and vanilla and stir well. 

4.      Add eggs one at a time, being sure to mix well in between each addition. 

5.      Slowly add cake mix and mix well. 

6.     Fill cupcake liners ¾ full (This is where my recipe differed. I put enough batter to thinly cover the bottom of the liners then added a full sized peanut butter cup.  Then I filled the liners with the rest of the batter to make it 3/4 full) and bake for 12-15 minutes (mine took a little longer) or until a knife or toothpick comes out clean.  Be sure not to over bake them, and place them in an airtight container as soon as they are out of the oven. 

7.     Buttercream: Beat butter, cream cheese and peanut butter until light and fluffy (should take about 5 minutes).  Add vanilla and as much powdered sugar as desired (I used 5 cups). 

8.     Pipe onto cooled cupcakes.

 Enjoy!