Brandied Strawberry Banana Cupcakes

Presenting the recipe that couldn't wait til the weekend: Brandied Strawberry Banana Cupcakes. As with many ideas, it started with ingredients in my kitchen that were calling out for a meaningful use. Bananas that I didn't feel like eating and leftover strawberry buttercream from the strawberry macarons...hmmmm...strawberry banana cupcakes! Since Giada de Laurentiis' chocolate mascarpone cupcakes had worked so well for me, I went for her banana cake recipe I had seen a while ago, and was not disappointed! (Click here to watch a video of the recipe, here for the recipe on the Food Network)

These beauties are an adaptation of that recipe, with the spices removed and fresh diced strawberry, sugared and soaked in brandy, thrown into the mix. With or without the strawberry buttercream, they are moist, fruity, and light. And not too sweet! I would almost call them a "muffin" without the frosting. A lot of the strawberry flavor is in the frosting, however, so I wouldn't skip it altogether - perhaps just make it a glaze by adding less powdered sugar to the buttercream if you want to lighten the effect.

Brandied Strawberry Banana Cupcakes

1/4 lb fresh strawberries
several T sugar
several T brandy (optional)
1 1/2 C flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 C sugar
1/2 C canola oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed well

Wash, cut off the tops, and dice the strawberries into approximate 1/4 inch cubes. Set in a bowl and sprinkle with a few tablespoons of granulated sugar and a few tablespoons of brandy (even if you eliminate the brandy, do sugar the berries, since this will draw out their juices). Let sit for at least a couple of hours or overnight if possible.

When the berries are ready, preheat the oven to 325 degrees and line a 12-muffin pan with cupcake liners. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside: flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder. In another bowl mix the sugar, oil, vanilla, eggs, and strawberries (which should be at least 2/3 C including the liquid that has developed with it).

Add half of the dry ingredients to the wet, and mix in until just combined. Mix in the mashed bananas, and then add the rest of the dry ingredients. Be sure to avoid overmixing - mix just until the dry ingredients are incorporated.

Divide into 12 cupcake molds, and bake for 25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before icing.

I don't even really like banana and strawberry flavors together, but I loved these! I suppose I shouldn't make fun of Giada's bobblehead so much...come on, you know you've heard that one before. I repent, Giada, your cupcakes are amazing!

Fall Cupcakes

Since I'm taking forever to write this post, I decided to just post the pictures without the full recipes, but you've got the idea from my previous cupcake posts: make a white cake mix and add flavors, decorate with buttercream or cream cheese frosting tinted with complementary flavors and colors!

Here we go:


These are the vanilla bean brandy and mint chip cupcakes. As you might guess, the former are flavored with the seeds of a vanilla bean and a small touch of brandy, and the latter were given a light touch of mint extract and sprinkled with dark chocolate chunks (and green food coloring reminiscent of the ice cream!).


On the left are the caramelized apple cupcakes, which are based on a Tarte Tatin idea; I caramelized an apple, puréed it, and mixed some in with the batter. Then I made some brown sugar caramel and coated the bottom of each cupcake liner with the caramel and poured the batter in on it. They stuck fantastically to the pan, so greasing it would have been good, but in the end I was able to peel the paper off each cupcake and turned them over into new liners, as pictured here. Since a Tarte Tatin is an upside-down cake, I thought it would be appropriate...and I added more caramel on top for good measure. On the right are pumpkin spice cupcakes, to which I added spices based on my family pumpkin pie recipe, plus some pumpkin purée. Both of these cupcakes were moister than the others because of the fruit purées, and the others were lighter.


Mint chocolate chip, topped with chocolate buttercream that had just a hint of mint extract (the stuff is strong, so be careful!) and dark chocolate chunks.


Pumpkin spice, swirled on top with cream cheese frosting that had a bit of the pumkin pie spice in it (see the flecks?), and an abstract pumpkin piped on with a few green sprinkles to insinuate a stem. The pumpkin decoration is a bit too abstract, since people still had to ask what the flavor was, but I still think it's cute.


I kept the vanilla bean decoration simple, adding more vanilla bean seeds to the buttercream, but again included brandy to keep a thematic kick to the cupcake.

And, finally, the caramelized apple took a squiggly dollop of cream cheese frosting on top, with more brown sugar caramel mixed in.

I've just learned that there is a book out there called The Cake Mix Doctor which basically does what I've been doing with these cupcakes - it tells you how to start with a cake mix and flavor it up in all sorts of ways. This reinforces for me the fact that cake mixes are fairly fool proof; you can do a lot to them and they'll still turn out great!

I've added fruit purées of varying densities, extracts, cocoa powder, coffee, caramel, fruit juice, spices, sprinkles, dried fruit, Oreos, coconut, nuts, honey, almond paste, and candy (i.e., all manner of liquids, fats, and sugars!) and every one has been a success. As my mom says, cake mixes are full of stabilizers that home cooks don't have access to for cakes from scratch, which means that cakes from scratch can be pretty difficult to get right (something I personally have proven with a number of dense, heavy cakes). It takes mastering a number of correct techniques in order to get a good scratch cake.

So, don't feel bad if you rely on cake mixes! Why not use a fool-proof method of achieving a moist and well-textured cake? Just get creative by doctoring the batter up a bit to satisfy your inner food artist. And make sure to use homemade frosting, since that part is super easy and makes an immeasurable difference in the final product.