Baby banana cakes with cream cheese icing

I can't believe that my little brother turned 26 this month. I feel like time is flying by at a million miles an hour. He says he hates birthdays because he feels old .... how does he think I feel when he says that? Older.


He doesn't like us to make a fuss on his birthday, but I couldn't resist baking something for him. He is a little bit fussy (but getting better with age), so I made plain, un-iced baby banana cakes for him. Mr X took some to work with him, and I topped those with lemon cream cheese icing.


I used the Exclusively Food banana cake recipe, but replaced some of the white sugar with brown sugar.


Makes 16.
Ingredients:
125g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar 

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of very ripe, mashed banana (approx 3 large bananas)
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional, I didn't use it this time)
2 large eggs
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon buttermilk
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Method:

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C, and grease and line cupcake pans - enough for 14-16 cupcakes, depending on how full you make them.

Place butter, sugar, banana, vanilla and eggs in a food processor and pulse to combine for approximately two minutes. Add butter milk and pulse to combine.

Sift flour and bicarb soda into a bowl. Add this to the blender and pulse again until just combined, scraping down the sides if required.

Pour batter into prepared liners. I filled mine 2/3 full. I found filling them this amount resulted in a nice, very slightly domed cupcake.

The recipe can easily be doubled, however, in my experience you may find you can't put all the ingredients in the food processor at once! Just mix it up in a bowl instead.

Cream cheese icing

Ingredients:

100g cream cheese, softened

50g butter, softened
2  cups icing sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Method:
Beat the cream cheese and butter in a bowl until light and creamy, about 2 minutes. Sift in the icing sugar and beat well.