Idea behind:
To put a pie into a cupcake. Banana bread with caramel injection and a caramel flavoured frosting. The banana bread is really more like a cake and I wanted to use this recipe.
The cake:
The cake is perfect. I don't think I could wish for a better banana bread since I have been baking it since I was about oh, hrmmmm 8. It comes from my Sesame Street books and in particular is Big Bird's banana bread. Very simple and always a winner.
The Caramel:
The original caramel that I made was from the back of the Sweetened condensed Milk tin. You would've thought that it would be perfect but found that it had too much sugar for its own good. I went for a standard Australian caramel recipe which calls for 2 tablespoons of golden syrup and no extra sugar. It worked fine and it didn't harden too much as the previous one did.
The icing:
I used a simple buttercream and added a good quarter of a cup of the caramel to the mix to flavour it.
Overall I found the cupcake cloyingly sweet and too overbearing. I think next time to bring the 'cream' element to the cupcake I'll use vanilla buttercream frosting. I will need a decoration to differentiate and am considering dried banana chips, possibly just a round placed on top.
Overall very successful and I think I will incorporate these cupcakes into the menu.
