NBM, Day 14: Banana Cupcakes with Malted Milk Chocolate Ganache

Having made a few too many big-batch items for National Baking Month, I decided I needed to make something with a smaller yield, so I turned to One Bowl Baking by Yvonne Ruperti, which has a nice selection of reasonably portioned recipes (like a dozen cupcakes rather than 24 or 30). Since I had ripe bananas, as usual, I went for the Banana Cupcakes with Malted Milk Chocolate Ganache. Pretty straightforward, and one of the great things about cupcakes (as opposed to layer cakes) is that they cool down fairly quickly and can be frosted not too long after they're out of the oven. Nice flavors, and a solid recipe.

NBM, Day 4: Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

For Day Four of National Baking Month, I went with a classic, certainly my most-baked chocolate cupcake: Magnolia’s Chocolate Cupcakes with their lovely Chocolate Buttercream. These beauties will be going to a kind of sad event, so I hope they put the sweet in the bittersweet for everyone there.

Chocolate Cupcakes

Apparently, I never get tired of making these chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream from More from Magnolia.

Every Peanut Butter Cupcake in the Book

For a recent work birthday, I needed to make something that involved chocolate and peanut butter. I'd started to feel that over the years, I'd done all the varieties of things I could make (cakes, pies, ice creams), so this year, I opted for cupcakes. When I perused Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes, I ended up deciding to make all four of the peanut butter-chocolate cupcake recipes. Each one made a dozen cupcakes, so I was sure to have leftovers. I made a double batch of her peanut butter frosting for half of the cupcakes; for the other half, I used a chocolate buttercream.