Banana Pudding Cupcakes
Banana Pudding is a Southern favorite and I thought that it would be the perfect flavor for a cupcake! These Banana Pudding Cupcakes have a banana cake base, a vanilla pudding filling, smooth banana buttercream on top, and a perfect crunch with some crushed Nilla wafers.
Ingredients
Method
Start with the Pudding!
- Before baking the cupcakes, it is important to make the pudding first as it will need to rest in the fridge for about 30 minutes!
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment (an electric hand mixer works fine as well), whip 2 cups of heavy cream and the entire package of Jello instant vanilla pudding mix.
- Whip this on medium speed for about 1-2 minutes.
- Add the pudding to a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the fridge to chill for 30-45 minutes.
For the Cupcakes
- Preheat the oven to 350℉ and a line a cupcake tin with cupcake liners (this recipe makes about 14 cupcakes so I would recommend using two cupcake tins so that you can bake them all at once!)
- In a medium mixing bowl, whisk all of the dry ingredients together.
- Add those dry ingredients to the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.
- If you would like, you can combine all of the wet ingredients in a separate bowl before adding them into the stand mixer at once. This will give you pretty much the same results, but I like to follow the steps below to ensure everything is mixed perfectly.
- If you did not follow the step above (adding all of the wet ingredients at once), go ahead and follow these steps:
- Add the melted butter, vanilla, and banana extract on top of the dry ingredients in your stand mixer and begin to mix on low speed.
- As that is mixing on low, add the eggs one at a time to ensure that they are well incorporated.
- Lastly, add the sour cream and buttermilk (I like to combine these in a separate bowl first, give it a good whisk on the side, and then add that to the cupcake batter to ensure it is perfectly smooth).
- Mix on medium speed until all of the ingredients are JUST incorporated (do not over-mix the batter!)
- Now that the batter is ready, use a large ice cream scoop to scoop the batter into the cupcake tin.
- Bake at 350℉ for 18-20 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (a crumb or two on the toothpick is perfectly okay!)
- Let the cupcakes cool in the tin for about 10 minutes before taking them out and placing them on a cooling rack to finish cooling before filling and decorating.
For the Buttercream
- While the cupcakes are baking and cooling, we can go ahead and make the banana buttercream!
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the room temperature butter on medium speed for 10 minutes. You want the butter to be silky in texture and pale in color before moving on to the next step.
- Add the pinch of salt, vanilla extract, and banana extract to the butter and mix to combine. Give the bowl a good scrape with a rubber spatula halfway through mixing to ensure everything is well incorporated.
- Weigh out the powdered sugar before adding it to to the bowl to ensure that it is exactly 1.35 lbs! This will help to avoid a gritty texture.
- Add the heavy cream and powdered sugar to the butter mixture and mix on low speed at first before increasing the speed to medium.
- Continue mixing on medium speed until everything is well incorporated and you have smooth banana buttercream.
Time to Decorate
- Once your cupcakes have fully cooled, scoop out a small portion of the center of each cupcake to make room for the pudding filling.
- Grab the pudding from the fridge and scoop it into a piping bag.
- Cut the tip of the piping bag off and fill the center of each cupcake with the vanilla pudding.
- Next, place an Ateco 809 piping tip into a separate piping bag and add the banana buttercream frosting to that bag.
- Pipe the banana buttercream around the edge of each cupcake, leaving room in the center for more pudding.
- Fill the center that you left empty with more pudding until it comes out of the top of your buttercream so that it is visible when you present your dessert!
- Lastly, crush some Nilla wafers and sprinkle those over the top of each cupcake before finishing it off with a whole Nilla wafer.
How to Store
- Since these cupcakes have a pudding filling that uses heavy cream, you will need to serve these cupcakes within a few hours of decorating them. I like to package them in up in cupcake boxes (or air-tight containers) so that they don't lose any moisture before serving.
- If you would like to make these ahead of time, you should skip the last step of the decoration process (the Nilla wafers), store the cupcakes in an air-tight container, and freeze overnight. Then, when you're ready to serve them the next day, be sure to bring them to room temperature before serving, add those Nilla wafers on top, and then they're ready to enjoy! If you add the Nilla wafers before freezing, the Nilla wafers will lose their crunch.
- The important thing to note is that you should never refrigerate cupcakes! The refrigerator will dry them out so you will need to serve them right away (within a few hours as mentioned above) or wrap them up and freeze them overnight!
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