Banoffee Cupcakes

I wasn’t actually planning on doing any baking today. I had the best intentions on Thursday night of baking on Sunday. I planned what I was going to bake and I went to the supermarket to get the ingredients. And then later that night I got the terrible news from my parents that my Gran had sadly passed away.

Although she had been ill with dementia for some time it was still such a shock. At the age of 18 I moved out from my parents house and went to live in Preston, where my gran lived, to go to uni. Over the last 7 years I became very close to my Gran...she helped and supported me when I left home, doing anything she could to make life easier for me. We could often be found having lunch out in preston and wandering round the shops. I would share all my gossip with her and she would give me advice on any dilemmas I had! She really was an amazing Gran and I am going to miss her so much.

I have therefore spent a huge part of the weekend feeling sad, not sleeping and bursting into tears at random and totally inappropriate momemts..i.e. the middle of the suit shop whilst trying to find a suit to wear to the funeral. It all got a bit too much...

This morning when I woke up I really didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t feel like I really wanted to go out anywhere but I didn’t want to just sit infront of the tv either. So I decided that I would do as I planned to do and bake! My Gran definitely wouldn't have wanted me sat around the house feeling upset thats for sure!

As I still had a packet of Oreos left and last weeks Oreo cupcakes went down so well with Karl's work mates I decided I would make these again. I also wanted to try something new and decided this was the weekend I'd make Banoffee Cupcakes out of the Eat Me book. I absolutely adore banoffee pie..(this is my mums fault as she has got a slight addiction to it and its obviously rubbed off on me) so the thought of a banoffee pie cupcake seemed very interesting indeed!

The first thing I had to do to make these cupcakes was make the toffee sauce which would go in the centre...apparently you could buy it ready made but me being me decided I would do it ‘properly’ and make it myself! The recipe said to use a can of condensed milk and boil it for 3 hours....how hard could that be? Well not hard at all really...but throughout the whole 3 hours I was sure that the can was going to explode at any moment...it didn’t..luckily!

Anyway, once the toffee sauce was done I set about making the banana cupcakes. It was a vanilla cupcake recipe with mashed up banana in it to flavour it...it smelt gorgeous even before cooking. A few months ago i tried a banana cupcake from a bakery near me and the cake was really heavy, so I was a little worried my cupcakes would turn out in similar state...luckily they didn’t and the banana flavoured the cakes perfectly. Unfortunately they didn’t rise quite as much as I’d have liked. I used different cupcake cases for these - they seemed very thin and wider than my usual ones so I'm wondering if this had anything to do with it...but I will definitely be going back to my usual ones next time!

Once the cakes were cool I hollowed out the centre and put toffee sauce into the cupcakes and also on the tops. I then piped swirls of vanilla butter creams onto the tops of the cakes and decorated with a dried banana piece. The recipe in the Eat Me booked recommended to use whipped cream and real bananas on the top of the cake...a lovely combination if the cakes were to be eaten right away, however the majority of these will probably be eaten tomorrow by which time the toppings may be a little past their best!

I possibly made the butter cream for these cakes a bit too thin and I don’t think my decorating was as tidy as I would have liked but I guess this can be forgiven due to how upset I have been and the baking definitely did what I wanted it to do... cheered me up a little this afternoon and took my mind off things.