Chocolate Banana Cupcakes
Servings: 12 servings
A perfectly delicious way to use up old bananas and satisfy your chocolate craving! These easy to make cupcakes deliver delicate chocolate flavor are not as heavy as banana bread.
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Ingredients
- ½ cup butter room temperature
- ¼ cup white sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ½ TBS vanilla
- 2 eggs
- 2 whole peeled browned bananas
- 1 cup flour
- ½ cup cocoa powder I use Hershey's Special Dark, which is 100% cocoa however you can choose to use what you have on-hand
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
Chocolate Ganache
- 4 ounces semi sweet chocolate
- ¼ cup heavy whipping cream
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In your mixing bowl, combine butter, sugars and vanilla and mix until smooth.
- Add in eggs and mix until incorporated.
- Add in bananas, and mash them into the batter with a potato masher or spatula and then mix until incorporated and smooth.
- Add in the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder, then slowly mix them into the batter till smooth.
- Fill liners to about 80-85% they don't puff up like a cake batter would and bake cupcakes for 16-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Once you remove the cupcakes from the oven, place them on a wire rack/cookie rack to allow them to cool.
- While cupcakes are cooling, make the ganache.
- All you need to do to make ganache is to heat the cream, as soon as it steams and you see the first bubble(s) remover the cream from the heat. You do not want to boil this. Add in the chocolate chips, allow it to sit for a few minutes and then stir till smooth. The warm cream will melt the chocolate.
- Dip just the tops of the cupcakes one by one into the ganache, giving each a thin covering of ganache. If you want a thicker topping you can allow the toppings to harden up a bit on the cupcakes, rewarm the remaining ganache (or make a seconds batch) and dip a second time OR you could make a whipped chocolate ganache instead.
- If you want an extra chocolate kick, feel free to add in some chopped chocolate or chocolate chips to the batter.
Notes
You can also choose to make a delicious chocolate frosting for these by whipping 1 stick of room temperature butter for 3 minutes, next add in 1 cup confectioners (powdered) sugar and whip for another 2 minutes. Add in 1 ½ TBS vanilla and mix till incorporated and then add in ⅓ cup melted chocolate and a pinch of salt. Mix until smooth. SO yummy! Tip, yes you can melt your chocolate in the microwave (using semi sweet chocolate chips) melt in 30 second bursts, tossing once or twice until chips are "shiney". Allow them to sit for a minute to finish melting, stir until smooth and add to the frosting mixture.