Banana Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting and Salted Caramel Sauce

Seeing as I have recently posted a salad, I think it's okay to post a dessert again :D Here are some incredibly moist, utterly delicious banana cupcakes, topped off with a vanilla frosting and accompanied by an indulgent salted caramel sauce (from here). If this isn't tasty I don't know what is :)

 

Ingredients (for 12 cupcakes)

75 g of butter
75 g of sugar
2 eggs
150 g of flour
150 ml of milk
1 ripe banana
vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder

For the frosting:
100 g of butter
200 g of icing sugar
vanilla essence

For the salted caramel sauce:
200 g of white sugar
90 g of butter, cut up into pieces
120 ml of double cream
1 teaspoon of salt


Start off by beating together the butter and sugar, add in the 2 eggs and then in two steps the flour (mixed together with the baking powder) and the milk, alternating between the two. Add in the vanilla sugar and mash up the banana. Mix everything together and prepare your cupcake cases. Preheat the oven to 175°C and place the mixture into the cases. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

For the frosting, beat the butter on a high speed of your hand mixer until it goes white and fluffy. Then add in the icing sugar, beating a little longer. Lastly whisk in the vanilla essence (or the scraped out seeds of a vanilla pod).

Lastly, make the salted caramel sauce by heating up the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Once it has turned an amber gold colour add in the butter and stir immediately. After this has dissolved, pour in the double cream (carefully) and leave to boil for a minute. Remove from the heat and stirr in the salt.

Assemble the cupcakes once they have cooled down by piping the vanilla frosting on top and adding drizzels of the salted caramel sauce. The rest of the caramel sauce will keep in a sealed container in the fridge for about 2 weeks. Enjoy! :)