The Story:
I needed to make something banana, due to the fact that I had 2 very brown bananas on my counter. But I didn’t know if I should top them with cream cheese frosting or chocolate. Cream cheese is basic and simple and chocolate frosting on a banana cake doesn’t always photograph well for me. So I decided to do both!
Banana Chocolate Swirl Cupcakes
Servings 24 Cupcakes
Ingredients
Banana Cake:
- 1 box Yellow or White Cake Mix
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 2 ripe bananas mashed
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1/3 cup oil
- 3 eggs
- 3/4 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Cream Cheese Frosting:
- 8 oz cream cheese softened
- 1/4 cup butter softened
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3-4 cups powdered sugar
Chocolate Buttercream:
- 3/4 cup butter softened
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 3-4 cups powdered sugar
Instructions
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1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line pans with cupcake liners.
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2. Sift cake mix and cinnamon into a small bowl and set aside.
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3. In a separate small bowl, finely mash bananas using an fork. Add baking soda and lemon juice, stir, and set aside.
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4. In a large bowl, gently whisk oil, eggs, buttermilk, sour cream and vanilla extract together.
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5. Add bananas to the wet ingredients and stir.
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6. Add cake mix and stir until smooth.
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7. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full and bake for 15-22 minutes, or until and inserted knife comes out clean.
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8. Chocolate Swirl Frosting: Cream Cheese Frosting: Beat cream cheese and butter for 2 minutes. Scrape down bowl and add vanilla extract. Slowly add powdered sugar until you reach your desired consistency. Remove from mixing bowl and place in a small bowl. No need to wash your mixing bowl, the chocolate buttercream will mix right in!
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9. Chocolate Buttercream: Beat butter for 2 minutes. Add vanilla extract and cocoa powder. Slowly add powdered sugar until you reach your desired consistency.
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10. To swirl the frosting, you will need 3 piping bags. Bag #1, fill with some of your cream cheese frosting (do not put in too much). Bag #2, fill with some of your chocolate buttercream (again, not too much). Bag 3, fill with your desired piping tip, then fit Bags 1 & 2 into it. This will take a little finessing, but you can do it! (See photo)
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11. Pipe onto cooled cupcake and top with sanding sugar and fresh banana slices.
Love the two toned frosting!
I love it!!
It looks so YUMMY!!! frosting is…WOW!
I own a cupcake business and I’m always looking for new and exciting recipes. I love your blog! I just figured this trick out with the piping bags a few weeks ago. It adds such a different taste to the buttercream adding two different flavors in! <3 it 🙂
Hi Lizzy,
This frosting is beautiful!!!! I am trying to figure out how to pipe it. I understand how to place the bags and the tip. Do you swirl it in a circle? How do you make the chocolate always end up of the same side? I’m just in love with these cupcakes!!!!!
thanks!!
These look so great! I just purchased some decorating bags that have two compartments in them. This would be perfect to try them! Great job, as usual!
Hello Lizzy!
I just wanted to let you know that I used the buttercream and frosting recipes from here to top your Easy Banana Cupcakes recipe and it was divine! I love the taste of the buttercream and the frosting together as well as all those who had a cupcake. It received rave review so again, thank you!
What a great idea for the frosting! I don’t think I’d have the patience for it and would probably end up with a much messier version though! haha
This is gorgeous. Do you just snip the bags for the frosting and use the one tip then? LOVE!!!
What a lovely idea for swirl frosting! I’m throwing my sister a surprise baby shower in June, and think I’ll try this out with two tones of blue 🙂
Oh My goodness, how do you get your cupcakes so beautiful!? I’m going to die they are so pretty. All of them sound so good! I have tried the swirling thing , but it mixed together and came out kinda yellow in the middle.
I used 3 bags. One with chocolate, one with white and then wiggled them both into a large bog to keep that defined line.
First things first…….I LOVE your website! Second, I made these cupcakes last night and had an epic fail on making the two toned frosting 🙁 My cream cheese frosting was not stiff enough as I ran out of powdered sugar and when I put the two together, well lets just say I had bags of frosting all over the kitchen! Maybe some got on the walls….hehehe. BUT!…….I just ended up putting chocolate on some and cream cheese on the other and let me tell you!!! DELICIOUS! That was the most moist cupcake I have ever had! My husband almost fell out of his chair he loved it so much!
Side note: I sent my husband to work this morning with a cupcake to take to one of his co workers. A couple minutes later I got VM telling me that he was putting all his stuff in the car for work and ended up putting the cupcake ON TOP of the car so he had free hands. Well…….that cupcake is somewhere in our neighborhood as he drove off with that amazing cupcake on the roof of the car 🙁 I almost cried! lol He blames it on being in a sugar coma….haha! Mine made it to work as I have a carrier like a normal baking addict 🙂
LOVE LOVE LOVE this cupcake and will definitely be making it again!
They are absolutely gorgeous! I am just itching to make them, but I have one question. I understand how you make the swirled frosting work with the three piping bags, but what tip did you use on your larger bag?
Hi! I am making these soon!! So cute. When you place the two bags into the one, do you simply cut of the ends of the two bags before placing them in the larger? Or did you place two small tips on those and then into the larger? I’m hoping I can make this look pretty! 🙂 I may end up piping the colors on top of each other, lol!! Thank you!!
Just snip the ends off of the two bags before putting it into the larger one. It takes a little finesse and don’t over fill your bags, but it works really great!
Thank you!! 🙂
Thank you…. Awesome recipe