Banana Cupcakes

For some reason, in the past few weeks when I've wanted to bake it's been all about cupcakes. Maybe it has to do with the pounds of powdered sugar in my cabinets (leftover from dh's Cupcake Birthday Extravaganza) or maybe it's because I'm a bit cookied-out. Either way, when I signed up to bring a dessert to our church's potluck dinner cupcakes it would be!

And not just any cupcakes -- banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

I feel I have the making of *my* favorite banana bread (see previous TastyKate post) down pat. But cupcakes are another beast. It's not easy to get light and fluffy from a recipe that is deliciously dense and moist. So I was on the search for the best banana cupcake recipe!

During my cupcake baking extravaganza I realized the density of my cupcakes mostly has to do with the amount of flour you add...duh! So for 12 cupcakes I usually aim for about 1 cup of flour and for 24 cupcakes it's around 1 3/4 depending on the amount of liquid the recipe calls for.

A recipe that fit the bill and had rave reviews was not hard to find. Martha Stewart has an incredible cupcake selection. You can get the recipe here.

Rather than using the honey-cinnamon frosting, which sounds amazing, I had to pair these cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I LOVE cream cheese frosting -- and I can't imagine banana or carrot cake without it!  You can get the frosting recipe I used here (I scaled the measurements back quite a bit).

So, next time you have ripe bananas, pass up the bread and make these cupcakes!!