Banana Split Cupcakes

In recent months I have found that I have a passion for cooking. You see I have been in nursing as a certified nursing assistant for over eight years. While working in facilities over the years I knew two things: 1) the residents love to eat and 2) they hated the food.

So, while working in a group home, I always made it a very special experience and always made sure that their meal was extra special for them and in return I felt good.

So today, I want to share with you something simple I would do. Although I may be cheating and using a couple of box mixes, I am definitely working up to those homemade elements and some day hope to sharpen my skills. I certainly invite you to use your from-scratch methods.

Your first and most important in my opinion, is to make a fresh pot of Cafe Bustelo Coffee, but of course you can choose your coffee of choice.

Your next step is to put on some great music. I don't care if you jam out to some Eminem, Led Zeplin, Fleetwood Mac, Brad Paisley. Whatever gets you going and makes you jive and quite frankly makes you happy. For me, I love to put my Pandora on Billie Holiday and let her rip. All the greatest like Etta James, Frank Sinatra, and Nat King Cole. All of the best of some of the greatest music there ever was.

Lastly, clear your kitchen and prepare your palette and have fun!

White Cake Mix or Your Own White or Vanilla Cake Recipe

(3 eggs, Oil)

Strawberry Gelatin or Jello

Banana Pudding Mix

Heavy Whipping Cream

Cherries

Chocolate Almond Bark

*Chopped Nuts (if no allergy)

Cooking Spray

Cupcake Papers

You'll also need a cupcake pan.

* This recipe yields approximately 4-6 prepared Banana Split Cupcakes total. The others, I just use a tub of the regular icing and share with the kids in the neighborhood.

Now this is the easy part. All you're going to do is put your cake together. With this particular cake mix. All it requires is 3 eggs, 1 cup of water and a 1/4 cup of oil. I blended it on moderate speed and scraped the edges, just to make sure I had the batter evenly mixed. Again, if your using your recipe, have fun with it. I even thought after the fact, we could have even added pineapple to this mixture- because pineapple on a banana split is always a great touch!

Now while your doing this, make sure your oven is preheating on 350 degrees for a light pan. Mine is a Teflon coated black pan, so I went ahead and went with 325.

This recipe as noted above, will make either 18 cupcakes or a dozen cupcakes and a mini-cake. I opted to make a mini-cake, because my ex-husband is a human garbage disposal and will eat anything. So I always like to take him something. I know he will enjoy it.

Now, we will get 6 beautiful Banana Split Cupcakes out of the main recipe and then 6 more additional cupcakes, that I will have for the neighbors and such.

Sharing has always been so important to me. Whenever I cook, I put so much into it and it truly makes me so happy, so while I share something small with you, I hope you understand how happy it makes me to do so. Thank you for being here with me.

Now, distribute the batter among your pans, specifically the cupcake cups- 2/3s of the way. This is going to be much like a poke cake. So when we add the gelatin mixture to our cupcakes, they will expand- so do not over fill with batter. This will give you an even cupcake.

Bake for the desired time and do not be over concerned with over baking them, because your gelatin mixture is going to make this cupcake very moist.

Do not fear.

Carefully boil one cup of water. After your water comes to a boil, you'll add your strawberry gelatin.

Mix for approximately 2 minutes, or until all the gelatin is dissolved.

Then you'll add one cup of cold water to the mixture and stir for another two minutes.

Set the mixture aside.

At this time, you've been working pretty hard, so take a short breather and enjoy yourself.

The cupcakes should be finishing up and your house should be becoming fragrant about now.

Now, here are our before and after pictures. Now, please accept my apologies, as I could not get an action picture on adding the gelatin to our cupcakes, but I promise you it is so easy.

Since we are doing so to a cupcake. All you're going to do is the following:

1. Pour your gelatin into a small Pyrex measuring cup for easy pouring.
2. Mash a tablespoon into the middle of the cupcake. (no, you won't ruin the cupcake- remember the cupcake will swell and will congeal)
3. Pour about 1-2 tablespoons of gelatin into each cupcake.
4. Pour remaining into mini-cake if you chose that.

Now, that we've completed our cupcakes, we now need to chill them and let the gelatin set for two hours. In the meantime, we will prepare the frosting.

Now, while working with heavy whipping cream, it's important to remember two key factors in doing so:

1. MAKE SURE YOU SHAKE YOUR CREAM! If you don't, it will make you think you have curdled cream and you don't. So keep that in mind. Save yourself a trip to the store- AGAIN & AGAIN.
2. Work with very cold cream.

Take your banana cream pudding mix and place it in your mixing bowl, add two measured cups of heavy whipping cream.

You can use a mixer or do so by hand.

Preferably, I like to do so using a mixer but mine crapped out on me just in time and so I did mine by hand. As a side note, you do get better peaks with a mixer.

Now, since I did have a technical issue with my mixer, after I did get my frosting mixed, I immediately placed it in the freezer to get it cooled for about 15 minutes, re-mixed and then covered and placed in the refrigerator until the cupcakes set.

So our goal here is to make our frosting look as much like an ice cream scoop as possible. That is why it was so important to create a custard-like frosting and that the temperature of the frosting was so important.

So take your frosting, an ice cream scoop and create very fluffy proportionate balls of frosting and add it to your cupcake tops.

Be very careful, as your creations will be top heavy and may fall over. So be careful while storing.

Here we are adding some final touches.

Chop your walnuts to your desired texture and add to the frosting before you add your chocolate almond bark if you desire too.

Melt your almond bark in a bowl, heating until melted at increments of 30 seconds, making sure not to burn.

I chose to use a dispensing bottle to coat my cupcakes evenly. Between decorating cupcakes, I kept mine in hot water bowl to avoid hardening.

Add your cherry to the top and Bon Appetit!

Thank you, so much for joining me today! I hope you enjoy this recipe as much I did. I think you'll really enjoy the textures of the cupcake, as well as the flavors it has. Hope to see you next time when I come up with another classic. Take care and see you then!