Crazy Good Cupcakes

I'm a sucker for a good cupcake but I hate making them because there such a pain in the neck!  If I am going to make them, I usually just settle for the Duncan Hines special out of the box.  Each time I've ventured into the realm of truly homemade, I've been disappointed.  All I've tried to make have either burned, been too sweet, not sweet enough or just plain yucky.  So when I started the day, I didn't have high hopes.  But I've finally found the mother of all homemade cupcake recipes. 

I was doing some bookshelf organizing this morning (Does anyone else spend an hour on this from time to time or am I the only nerd that does?), and I came across a cupcake magazine that I hadn't seen in a while so I gave it a look.  On the first page they had 3 classic recipes, 1 white, 1 chocolate and 1 vanilla.  Then a few pages later, a banana buttercream was highlighted.  So I took a shot seeing 2 of my favorite flavors as a good omen. 

I was already impressed by the recipe just by judging the consistency of the batter.  I hate scooping cupcake batter into tins because it makes such a mess (I guess I should say I make such a mess...) It's usually so thin that it's hard to keep it on the spoon and winds up all over the tray and the counter.  But this batter was just thick enough that it stayed on the spoon until I wanted it off of the spoon.  When they came out of the oven they smelled so good that I just had to try one and they were delicious!  I would have been content to just eat them plain (I've always been more of a cake girl than an icing girl anyway)  but I decided to whip up the icing anyway.  After some initial issues, I finally succeeded.  It was good, but I wish I would have stuck with a plain old boring buttercream.  Even though I used real banana, it tasted like I used banana flavoring and I hate that taste.  Also, seeing that I had to (rather my dad had too...he's the icing whisperer...I suck at icing!) add sooo much 10X sugar to counter-act the wet bananas and butter, it was super sweet.  But they still tasted good and were just what I was hoping for on a crazy-rainy Sunday. 

Delicious!