Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Elvis Cupcakes

I'm sure you've heard of Elvis cupcakes, cupcakes inspired by his love of grilled banana and peanut butter sandwiches. Well....I Did It My Way! We are having a party at work and I thought these would make the Jailhouse Rock! OK, I don't work at a jailhouse but he didn't sing Medical Software Rock. I'm All Shook Up with excitement about these. Alright alright, enough of that. :)

These cupcakes are banana cake with peanut butter pudding inside. Topped with chocolate and peanut butter swirled icing. I cheated and used bought chocolate frosting tonight.

Banana Cake (from Paula Deen) makes ~26 cupcakes
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
2 cups mashed ripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350. Put paper liners in your muffin pans.
In a large bowl, combine butter and sugar. Beat at medium speed until fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk. Start with flour and end with flour. Fold in bananas. Spoon batter into muffin pans - filling 2/3 full. Bake for about 18 minutes. A wooden pick inserted in the center should come out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

Once the cupcakes are cool, use a melon baller and scoop out a well in the center of the cupcakes. Put the peanut butter pudding in a pastry bag and fill the hole. In another pastry bag, put peanut butter frosting in one side and chocolate frosting in the other side - so that both comes out of the tip. Pipe onto cupcakes.

Peanut Butter Pudding
1 small box vanilla pudding
2 cups of milk
8 tbsp peanut butter

Prepare the vanilla pudding with the milk. Melt the peanut butter in the microwave. Add to the pudding, stirring well.
Basically I put in 2 tbsp of peanut butter per vanilla pudding servings.

Peanut Butter Frosting
1 stick butter, softened
4 cups confectioner's sugar - sifted
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
half & half or milk

Beat the butter, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla together. Add half & half or milk to get it to the desired consistency.