Banoffee Cupcakes For Blog Hop #16

Haa.. one more wednesday and that brings us to another Blog Hop. I must agree that wednesdays excite me way too much. In fact i feel such excitement is illegal. Come Wednesday, i start counting the days for the weekend to come. I know that sunday s just another day for me. But still the yearning comes because of that extravagance you get. To sleep in late. Not that i m a heavy sleeper. But then, once in a while the body feels fantastic after a long sleep. Punctuated by some early morning door bell ringers of course. But all that doesnt deter me in getting my dose of snooze on a sunday.

     Well, other things which make me whistle on a Wednesday are blog hops and the fact that the kitchen will definitely get spruced up. This involves tidying the pantry, transforming into a generous Mata Hari and giving away stuff that i bought thinking i ll need them but dint use them anyway. Ooohh.. what a whirl wind of a sentence. I have just discovered that after 2 years of teaching grammar scrupulously, i m not enjoying teaching nouns after all. Yuck. Nouns are not fancy. I love prepositions. And clauses. Even reported speech. But not nouns. They make me stifle a yawn. I feel i could write a whole book. Just on nouns. That much is how much i ve taught nouns. And the best part about a wednesday is i sit down to make my own notes for any recipes that i ve tagged. I love doing this. It s like a session with a shrink for me and i enjoy it so thoroughly that i m springy as an easter bunny all day afterward. If i get around to making those recipes is another story totally.
   This week i got paired with Sweatha of Tasty Curry Leaf. And my note making session began way too early in the week. I was smitten by her space. It seemed like a chic multi cuisine restaurant. She has not left food from any corner of the world unexperimented. Bravo for that. I fell in love with all her bakes Properly like how a person who likes to bake should. And i made the famous banoffee cupcakes. Well the cupcakes are not famous. It s only the pie that is. I ve been wanting to make some but of course laziness kicks in when i want to just open the can of condensed milk to make some luscious dulce de leche. But this version seemed a smooth sail. I made it. We ate it. We licked our lips. And i think that will suffice. For you all to make it on your own.

Prep Time: Under 20 mins
Cook Time: 15 mins
Yields 7 cupcakes
Source: Tasty Curry Leaf

( The sauce is incredible. You can save it for later and use it on your fruit salad or even dunk in your rotis. Yumm.. You can replace the egg with 1 tbsp flax seeds ground along with 3 tbsp water to a creamy mixture. You wont have much of a difference as flax lends a nutty flavor. Because bananas in baroda are abnormally bland, like every other thing that grows on a plant,i used 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar. Other wise 1/2 cup and a tbsp less would suffice. In case you dont want to add that much butter, substitute 2 tbsp butter with 2 tbsp banana puree. And the vanilla s a must.)

All Purpose Flour 1 cup
Butter 4 tbsp softened
Brown Sugar powdered 1/2 cup
Banana Puree 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp
Baking powder 1.5 tsp
Salt 1/2 tsp
Vanilla extract 1/2tsp
Egg 1

For The Toffee Sauce:
Butter 3 tbsp
Condensed Milk 1/2 cup
Brown Sugar 1 tbsp

For Topping:(optional)
Whipped cream
Sprinkles or chocolate shavings
Banana slices from a banana

How To Make It?

Preheat oven to 180 c.
Sieve together the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
In a mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light.
Add the egg and the vanilla to this and whisk till fluffy.
Now, add the banana puree and whisk again until combined.
Add in the flour mixture slowly and combine until well incorporated. Feel free to use a whisk. But dont overbeat.
Line a muffin tray with paper cups and fill in the batter until each groove is half full.
Bake in a preheated oven for 12 to 15 mins or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Let it cool on a wire rack. In the meanwhile lets make the toffee sauce.
Heat a pan and add the sugar and wait just until it becomes sticky.
At this stage, add the butter.
Once the butter melts, add the condensed milk, stir continously to avoid hardening. Keep your flame level to medium while you do all this.
Once the mixture starts boiling, remove from fire and let it cool.
By now, the cakes must have cooled unless you live in a desert( read Baroda. Mine took an hour to cool down)
Once the cakes have cooled down, scoop out a lil from the middle of the cake by inserting a knife at a 45deg angle and cutting out a round disc. Repeat for all the cakes. Set aside.
Now comes the thrilling part. To fill in the cake with the sauce.
Transfer your sauce to a zip loc bag and seal it.
Make a small cut in the one corner of the bottom of the bag.
Place the cut corner of the bag into the cake s middle and gently squeeze in the sauce.
Once you are done piping the sauce, place 3 slices of banana on each cake.
Top them with whipped cream and sprinkles. Of course this is completely optional. You can pour excess sauce instead of all this rococo cream et al.

Serve them for dessert and i m sure you will get too many smiles your way. You will even have people waiting with a notebook  in hand to write down the recipe.
Off this goes to Blog Hop 16, I love Baking and Bake Fest 6 hosted by Sumee