Vegan Banana Cupcakes with Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting

It seems I am working my way through Isa and Terry's Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, similarly to how Julie cooked her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (here is the archived Julie/Julia Project blog), but this is a much smaller task and more enjoyable- I don't have to worry about lobster murder, or even any animal products at all :)

cooling

After one bite my roommate says, "never make banana bread again, just these cupcakes."

I love that this process is happening organically. This past weekend I had no intention of baking but I  ran into the recurring problem of over-ripe bananas in the kitchen and felt the recurring compulsion to make something out of them rather then toss the. So I turned to the book and loosely followed their recipe for Banana Cupcakes. Here it is:

Vegan Banana Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 2 over-ripe bananas (3/4 cup)
• 1 1/4 C flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 C granulated sugar
• 1/3 C canola oil
• 2/3 C unsweetened plain soy, almond or rice milk
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 C chopped chocolate

Preheat oven to 350F and line cupcake pan with liners

Mash bananas until their are no chunks. Sift flour, baking soda, powder, salt and sugar into a large bowl and mix.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the oil, milk, vanilla, almond extract and bananas. Create a well in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Fill cupcake tins 2/3 full. Sprinkle some chocolate pieces into each cupcake and swirl it gently into the batter with 2-3 stirs. Bake for 20-22 minutes until a knife/toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Vegan Peanut Butter Frosting

Ingredients

• 3/4 C Crisco butter flavor shortening
• 2/3 C peanut butter (whatever type you prefer)
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 2-2 1/2 C confectioner's sugar
• 3-4 tbsp soy, almond, rice milk or soy creamer

With an electric hand-held mixer, cream the shortening until smooth. Add the peanut butter and vanilla and beat until very smooth (2-3 minutes). Beat in sugar. As the mixture begins to stiffen, add in the milk a tiny bit at a time. Beat until frosting is light in color and super fluffy (around 5 minutes). Make sure cupcakes are cool and frost away!