Yay-Ababa and Yum-Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

Yay-Ababa got a 4.0 on his first semester of science classes and his first time back in school since 1999!!!!!!!!  All that hard work and long nights paid off!!!!

Yum-today I made the best "Egg-free" recipe yet:-)  Most are coming to work, but B and I have already sampled them, and we saved one for Ababa to celebrate his awesome GPA!

I combined a few different recipes I found online, eliminated the egg, made a few other tweaks, and WOW!

I got 30 cupcakes, but B and I *ahem* "tested" a lot of the batter in the process, I think it would easily make 3 dozen.

Banana Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

CUPCAKES
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 very ripe large bananas, peeled
• 7 oz container Fage 2 % Greek yogurt (or as B says, "yor-gort":-)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I was out, so I used 1 tsp coconut rum and 1 tsp vanilla rum)
• 1 1/2 cup sugar (I would cut this down next time to 1 cup, maybe even 3/4 cup--also, I used half brown sugar and half white sugar)
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

FROSTING
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar (or as much as is needed to get the consistency you want)

8-ounce package cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter,  room temperature (I used Jiff as all the recipes online said old-fashioned or freshly ground wouldn't work, but I might try those next time anyway:-)

1 tsp vanilla (I used 1 tsp coconut rum)

CUPCAKES

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Mash bananas, yogurt, and vanilla together (I did this in my stand mixer first and then put in another bowl while I creamed the butter and sugar).  Stir or sift dry ingredients together. Alternately pour dry and wet into the creamed butter and sugar.

Bake in muffin tins at 350 for approx 20 minutes.

FROSTING

Toss everything but sugar into a mixing bowl and whip it together.  Gradually add sugar and whip until  desired consistency.

I was out of cupcake liners, so I made them myself (yes, I feel very Little House on the Prairie for doing that:-).

Fold a sheet of plain 8 1/2 x 11 paper to make an 8 1/2 X 8 1/2 square and trim off excess.

Fold 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 inch square of paper in half and in half again so that you have a 4 1/4 inch square stack.

trace a 4 inch circle and cut it out. (I used a ramekin, but then realized that the 8 oz tub of Philly cream cheese I was using in the frosting would work:-)

take the stack of 4 circles and rest on top of a 1/4 cup measuring cup.

press a slightly smaller bottle down onto the stack so that they pleat themselves into the measuring cup. (I used a bottle of kikkoman soy sauce)

Voila! Muffin liners, put in your cupcake/muffin pan and fill as usual.

They are a little looser than standard liners, but worked great!!!! Be careful when filling that you drop the filling into the center of each tin as these can slide around while you are filling if the batter is dramatically off-center.
And just for fun, here are some photos of B from memorial day, taken by our friend K.