New Recipe!

You have to love baking if you just complete an order and then try a new recipe!!  I say I love baking.  What it is, what I feel is contentment, an inner peace - obviously not during the chaos.  Did you ever hear the phrase "in the zone"?  Thats where I go.  I love the smells, the feel, the taste.  I love watching what happens when you put together seemingly innocent ingredients and see what transpires.  More than that I love watching people eat what I've created.  Their whole beings change.  Unless of course it's not any good. 

My sister and I share a love of cookbooks.  I love reading new ones, she loves reading older ones and new ones.  Its like knitting for me, I love the yarn and all the different things you can do with it.  But I only have two hands and can really only do one project at a time.  Sure, I can have several projects going at the same time, but can only actually do one at a time.  I digress again.  Reading all the knitting books, or the cookbooks, I see all these items I want to make - baking or knitting actually.  I imagine how they will taste, how others will enjoy them, what they will 'bring to the table.'  This is what brought me to trying another new recipe (that and the fact that I will need a bigger pool of flavors to choose from).  While I was stuck in traffic on Friday, I happened to have a cookbook/magazine with me.  Well, I came across many to choose from and narrowed it down to a few.  After consulting with my husband, Jeff, it was decided to try the Bananas Foster cupcake!! 

Did you ever have Bananas Foster on vanilla ice cream?  Oh, that is soooooo good.  Well this recipe incorporated several different types of mixtures that I haven't done before.  I wasn't sure what the cake portion would taste like with rum in it.  Raw - not good - I am not a drinker (well some types of beer and tequilla for sure!) baked was delicous.

The bananas foster will need to cool completely before putting on top of the icing.  I cooked the bananas in the butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg and tried to flame the rum - which didn't work too well because I tried it my way - let that cool. 

I didn't like the icing recipe that came with the cupcake recipe because I thought it wouldn't hold the bananas foster well.  I found another recipe that used heavy cream and cream cheese. 

After the cupcakes cooled, I applied the cream cheese whip cream icing, then the bananas foster, then finished it with a dollop of icing.  separately and combined this was absolutely delicious.  KEEPER!!

The cupcakes are in the center - surrounding the cupcakes are some of the extras we had at home.