Recipe: Banana Pups

For Gigi’s birthday, she wanted to bring in Banana Pups to share with her classmates. Basically, Banana Pups are a banana cupcake with a chocolate surprise in the center frosted like a chocolate puppy.

 

Here’s the recipe for the Banana Cupcakes. I modified Schweet ‘N Savory’s recipe just a bit.

3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/8 cups canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 ripe bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cups milk

I added a bunch of cinnamon–of course.
And a wonderful surprise in the middle: a mini Dove dark chocolate bar. Fill the cupcake tin with 1/2 the batter, add a chocolate square, and cover the rest of the tin with more batter.

Then Kevin made his usual chocolate butter frosting:

1/3 cup butter
4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
plenty of chocolate powder to your liking

Once the cupcakes are frosted, we added chocolate hearts for the ears, chocolate chips for the eyes, a strawberry Mento for the nose, and some licorice rope for the mouth.

And voila! Banana Pups!

Gigi had a really good time passing the Banana Pups to her class!