The Poe Family Blog: MDBD

This past weekend's MDBD was cupcakes once again. We actually ended up making two different kinds of cupcakes because I was having one of those days where I just couldn't pick which recipe to try. It actually worked our well because both recipes only made 12 cupcakes a piece.

The first one we tried, which was actually the only one Zoey helped me make, was originally pinned because Scott loves peanut butter, so I tend to pin anything peanut butter related. This particular recipe is for Peanut Butter Banana Brownie Cupcakes and the it came from Creative Outpour

Peanut Butter Banana Brownie Cupcakes

Ingredients for Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS:
1 banana
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

INSTRUCTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Fill 12 cup cupcake tin with liners
Smash the banana with a pastry blender

Stir in sugar, eggs (one at a time), and vanilla

Add in cocoa, flour, salt and baking powder

Add batter to cupcake tin with an ice cream scoop
Bake for 20 minutes

Cool for 15 minutes before adding frosting

Monkey joined us today for MDBD

Now it comes time for the peanut butter part of this recipe, the frosting. Frosting recipes and I are not friends. They almost never turn out. So needless to say, I was worried about this one. I probably wouldn't have even attempted to make it except for the fact that I didn't have to use butter in the recipe (I feel like all the other frosting I've made have tasted way too much like butter). I went ahead and gave this one a shot, and I'm glad I did. It turned out so good.

Ingredients for frosting

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup butter, olive oil, or coconut oil (pick which one you want to use. I went with olive oil)

3/4 cup peanut butter

3 Tbsp milk

INSTRUCTIONS:

Combine all ingredients in bowl

Blend with hand mixer until creamy, but don't over mix because it will start to break up

Put into piping bag and pipe onto cooled cupcakes

Finished product (My piping abilities are improving)

Final Ranking (1-10)
     1= Throw Directly in the Trash
     5= Not Bad, but Not Great
     10= Best Thing I've Ever Eaten

Scott: 7.5 (Banana was subtle. Frosting very peanut buttery and tasty)

Kristin:8.5 (I really liked these. I thought they were a good mix of flavors and the frosting was awesome)

The second cupcake recipe that I made was Indoor Smores Cupcakes from Taste's of Lizzy T's. I picked this recipe purely for the look of the cupcake. As I mentioned last week, the theme for Zoey's party is the Lorax. These cupcakes reminded me of the barbaloots and their love of marshmallows.

Ingredients

The recipe linked above was less of a recipe and more of instructions for decorating the cupcakes. It calls for chocolate cupcakes and chocolate frosting, so you could use any recipe you want for those. I went with the boxed mix pictured above. It was a combo that had the cupcake mix and the frosting mix in one box. I hoped this would help with my previously mentioned issue with making frosting. In addition to the cupcakes and frosting, you need marshmallows (one for each cupcake) and Teddy Grahams. You could use any flavor Teddy Grahams you wanted. I went with chocolate (much to Scott's displeasure) because I thought they looked more like barbaloots. I did not add the chocolate pieces that were in the original recipe.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Make your cupcakes and let them cool

My cupcake liners are apparently smaller than average, so I had more batter than would fit in 12 cupcake liners. As a result, I overfilled them and ended up with domes on my cupcakes. I just used a bread knife to level them off. This worked out well because the little tops were perfect size for Zoey to eat.

Frost your cooled cupcakes with a small amount of frosting

Place the marshmallows on a baking sheet and bake them in a 350 degree oven for about 5 minutes, or until lightly browned. If needed, broil them for just a minute to get them the color you'd like, but watch them carefully

After you've removed the marshmallows from the oven, place one marshmallow on the top of each cupcakes and follow that with a Teddy Graham