"Award-Winning" Banana-Peanut Butter cupcakes

Hey y'all!
I have a lot of excitement happening right now.
http://pinterest.com/pin/24840235414934941/?timeline=1 go ahead. Click on this link. I dare you. Anderson Cooper, silver fox of CNN and the Anderson show, pinned MY kale chip recipe on his Pintrest, then tweeted about it. How exciting is this? i will tell you how exciting it is. IT'S FREAKING EXCITING!
I have my dear friend Andrea to thank for this. She sent in the link, figuring hey why the hell not. And ta dam! that means he looked it up. Or his people did. Whomever, more publicity for me!

2nd thing. This recipe got me 1st place at my works annual contest. Helllll yeah! These two events sort of confirmed and lit up my desire to do this cookbook. Just when I thought this was a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of money, trying to decide whether it was a good idea or not, the universe put me back on my path.

It's nice to know other people than my friends and family like my recipes :)

OK! So here we go!

Banana-Peanut Butter cupcakes

Cupcakes :

• 1 1/2 cups of flour
• 3 mashed, ripped bananas
• 3/4 cups of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla
• 1/2 of butter or margarine
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon of baking soda

1. Pre-heat oven to 350.
2. Beat the butter, sugar, egg and bananas together, using a hand mixer or stand mixer. Or just the good 'ol elbow grease.  
3. Add the vanilla.
4. Incorporate the flour, salt and baking soda. Beat well.
5. Fill in cupcake/muffin molds. You can grease them first or line them with cupcake liners.
6. Bake for about 20 minutes. Using a toothpick, press it in the middle of one of the cakes. If the batter sticks then leave them for another 5 minutes.

Makes 12 normal size cupcakes or 28-30 mini ones.

Frosting:

• 1/3 cup of butter, at room temperature (could be vegan, margarine, or even shortening)
• 1 1/2 cup of peanut butter (I've used Kraft smooth)
• 1/2 cup of icing sugar.

1. Beat all the ingredients until the frosting is smooth and fluffy. You can adjust the peanut taste by adding or using less peanut butter. If you notice the consistency is a bit too thin, you can add sugar.
2. Ice the cupcakes. And enjoy!



These little guys are really good. They have that trusty banana-peanut butter combo. They are light, the frosting is fluffy, it melts in your mouth. It isn't for nothing that it won ;)

Try them out! Share them. People will love you that much more afterwards. Just make sure they aren't allergic!