Silent Night, Holy Night

My mom used a different vendor for Dad's grave blanket this year.  I drove out to see it two weeks ago and the second I put my car in park, Silent Night came on my Christmas Pandora station.  It was very fitting, since that was his favorite Christmas carol.  In a similar way, this year's grave blanket was perfect and very appropriate.  Classic and handsome, just like my dad.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Wow it's been awhile!  Life has been crazy and I've constantly been on the go enjoying it!  First we vacationed in Italy for a week, then we moved from Northwest Indiana to the BIG city of Chicago, and then it was fourth quarter, which is always a blitz of busy in accounting/finance.  It's still Q4 and I'm still racing around super busy, but I've been meaning to get back to two things: A) exercising and B) blogging.  Since I did Jillian's yoga DVD yesterday, I suppose I'll blog today.  What better to start back with than Banana Daiquiri Cupcakes, right?!

So the hubby went to the store last week and got all ripe bananas.  Naturally that means some of them turned to mush before I could work them into my daily menu, so I was on the search for mashed banana recipes.  Here is this week's winner.

Banana Daiquiri Cupcakes
(adapted from this recipe)

Cake:
1/4 cup unsalted butter - melted
1/3 cup Domino Light
1/3 cup Splenda Brown Sugar Blend
1/3 cup Jell-O Banana Pudding Mix
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 mashed ripe banana
1 cup + 2 Tbs cake flour
Pinch of salt
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup banana liquor

Icing:
4 Tbs butter
4 oz. light cream cheese
1 Tbs rum
1 Tbs banana liquor
1/2 tsp rum extract (to enhance the flavor if you don't add extra booze)
3-4 cups powdered sugar depending on what consistency of icing you prefer
Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line cupcake pan with 15 liners.

Whip together the melted butter, sugars, and pudding mix.  Add in two eggs and vanilla extract, mixing until smooth.  Mix in the mashed banana and begin adding dry ingredients once the banana is thoroughly incorporated in the mixture.  Add the liquor and mix until well blended.  Fill the cupcake liners 3/4 full and bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Remove from pan and cool on wire rack.

For the icing, beat together the butter and light cream cheese until the blend is one consistency.  Add the liquors and rum extract.  Mix well.  Gradually add the powdered sugar one cup at a time until the icing has reached your desired consistency.  You can also refrigerate the icing for 30 minutes while the cupcakes cool. 

This recipe is definitely a keeper; the cake baked wonderfully and was literally perfectly done at 20 minutes!  The one thing I may change next time is the icing.  The cake recipe calls for 1/3 cup banana pudding mix; since this isn't the full package I will probably add some leftover mixture to the icing next time to give it a bit more banana flavor and thicken it up all in one swoop. 

Cheers!