My house is smelling really good right now.

This weekend is my mother-in-law’s birthday.  Since Brandon and I won’t be around to celebrate with her this weekend, we’re taking her and Brandon’s dad out for ice cream tonight to celebrate.

And to make her birthday even “sweeter”, I thought I’d make her some cupcakes (let’s hope she’s too busy at work today to be reading this blog! ).

I found this idea for banana toffee cupcakes on the “Sweet Tooth Sweet Life” blog.  Courtney, the writer of the blog, had found the recipe on the Betty Crocker website and adjusted it to her liking.  Specifically, Courtney used diet soda to replace the oil and eggs from the original recipe.  But since I was making these for someone other than myself and didn’t want to take the risk of trying something new, I decided to stick closely to Betty’s original recipe.

The ingredients included:

• 1 box of yellow cake mix
• 1 cup of ripe, mashed bananas (I used 1.5 bananas, but it could be closer to 2)
• 1/3 c. water
• 1/3 c. vegetable oil
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• Toffee bits
• Caramel syrup, if desired

my ingredients

So my first step was to crack three eggs.  I always crack them in a separate bowl, in case I get any shells in there, I can remove them before putting the raw eggs into the batter.  And that’s what I did today…

hmm.

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

FYI, you’re supposed to crack all three eggs INTO the bowl, not beside it.

Just wanted to clear that up.

By now, you probably think I’m making this stuff up for “comedic-effect” for my blog.  But I can assure you that I’m not.  I’m just that klutzy.  I’m too cheap (ask my husband!) to waste a perfectly good egg (or bowl) just to make my blog more entertaining!

Fortunately, I had an extra egg.  So I cracked that one INTO the bowl and continued on.

putting the mashed banana into the mixer

the cupcakes before they went into the oven

Here’s what I did, step by step (minus that whole “egg on the cabinet” part…):

1. Set oven to 350 degrees and put liners in cupcake pan.
2. Put all of the ingredients (except for the toffee bits) into the mixing bowl and beat on low for about 30 seconds, then on medium speed for a couple of minutes.
3. Fill cupcake liners (I filled mine a little too high…oops!)
4. Sprinkle toffee bits over each cupcake.
5. Bake 16-18 minutes (mine took 17), or until toothpick comes out clean (or top of cupcake springs back when you touch it)
6. Before serving, drizzle with caramel (if you want it).

And here’s the finished product:

With the caramel:

The cupcakes were definitely a success, at least in my book!  You can taste the banana and almond extract, and the toffee bits add a nice little crunch.  They are great with or without the caramel… that step really isn’t even necessary!

yum

Hopefully my mother-in-law enjoys them as much as I did!  I’ll let ya know how it goes!