My very first Cupcake Hero!!!

So there's this awesome contest called Cupcake Hero! It's kinda like Iron Chef cause you're given a special ingredient each month and you see what you can come up with. This month's ingredient was Bananas!

I've always loved Banana Pudding (you know the stuff with the bananas and pudding and vanilla wafers) so I wanted to try try to make it in cupcake form!

I started with a vanilla wafer banana cupcake base. I got the recipe idea from a graham cracker cupcake I found on Vanilla Garlic and then modified it to fit. So here's the recipe:

Vanilla Wafer Banana Cupcakes
Makes 12-14 cupcakes / 350 F oven

What You’ll Need...
1/2 cup of butter, room temperature
1 cup of sugar
3 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup of milk

1/2 cup banana puree
1 cup of flour
1 1/2 cups of vanilla wafer crumbs
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/8 teaspoon of salt

What You’ll Do...
1) Beat the butter for about 30 seconds until well creamed. Add the sugar and mix for 3 minutes using a paddle attachment until light and fluffy.
2) Add the eggs, one at a time, being sure to beat for 30 seconds for each egg.
3) Place vanilla wafers in a food processor or in a plastic bag and crush into small crumbs and powder.
4) Mix together the flour, vanilla wafer crumbs, baking soda and powder, and salt. Mix the 1/2 c of banana puree and 1/2 c milk. Add about 1/3 of the flour/wafer mixture to the butter mixture, then add some of the milk/banana. Continue to add the ingrdients in a dry-wet-dry method, ending with the dry. Continue to mix until just combined.
5) Scoop into cupcake papers and bake for 15-18 minutes in a 350 F oven or until a cake tester comes out clean.

I wanted to fill the cupcakes with the banana pudding mixture but, once I made it and filled them, the pudding stuff was thick enough to make an awesome frosting as well! So here's that recipe (modified from allrecipes.com):

Banana Pudding Frosting

• 1/2 package cream cheese
• 1/2 of a 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 small package instant vanilla pudding mix (for mine I mixed half a pack of banana cream pie pudding and half a pack of vanilla)
• 1 1/2 cups cold milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 of an 8 oz container frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 
  

• DIRECTIONS

  1. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Beat in condensed milk, pudding mix, cold milk and vanilla until smooth. Fold in the whipped topping.
  Once the cupcakes were filled and frosted, I stuck a vanilla wafer on top to look all pretty and voila! All done!