Banana Cupcakes
We love banana cake recipes, and these new homemade Banana Cupcakes are sure to please a crowd! They are soft with a tender crumb, and have wonderful banana flavor!
We've paired these scratch banana cupcakes with a simple cream cheese frosting-such a great combination of flavors!
Table of Contents
Why we Love Them
There are so many reasons to love these banana cupcakes. Here are just a few:
- Moist and tender
- Simple ingredients, easy to make
- Buttermilk makes for an extra soft crumb (as with our vanilla buttermilk cake and lemon cupcakes)
- Banana cakes taste amazing with cream cheese frosting!
- Perfect for birthdays, picnics, potlucks, and more!
Ingredients for Banana Cupcakes
Here is a quick look at the key players for our banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting! You can find the complete details in our recipe card at the bottom of this post!
A Few Ingredient Notes:
Ripe Bananas: Use ripe bananas for best flavor!
Buttermilk: We recommend using "full fat" buttermilk for richness and best texture. The acidity of the buttermilk softens the strands of gluten and creates a softer, more tender cake.
Cake Flour is also an important ingredient as it has a lower protein content than all purpose flour. This also creates a softer crumb.
The Cream Cheese in our simple frosting should be full fat, as low fat varieties will be a bit too soft.
How to Make Banana Cupcakes
These delicious banana cupcakes are based in part on our Banana Cream Cake recipe. We think that you will love it. You can find the full, printable recipe card further down in this post.
- First, preheat oven to 350 degrees F, line muffin pans with cupcake liners (this recipe makes about 30 cupcakes)
- In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt for 30 seconds, set aside.
- In another bowl, add the buttermilk, vanilla and mashed bananas. Blend and set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the slightly softened butter and mix at medium speed until smooth.
- Gradually add the sugar and continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (we do 3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of wet ingredients). Mix just until well blended- be careful not to over-mix.
- Next, add the banana cake batter to the cupcake liners. We put about ¼ cup batter into each liner.
- Bake at 350℉ for 15-18 minutes. (Ours were done closer to 18 minutes.) After removing the cupcakes from the oven, we like to quickly remove them from the pans so that they will not continue to bake.
Cream Cheese Frosting
We love this simple cream cheese frosting and have used it often over the years! We've made many variations of it as well.
Cream cheese frostings are great for spice cake, pumpkin spice cake, as well as classic cakes like Italian Cream Cake and Hummingbird Cake!
- Cut the butter into slices and add to the bowl of your mixer. Mix on low to medium speed until the butter is softened and smooth.
- Add the softened cream cheese to the butter, mixing at low to medium speed until incorporated.
- Add the vanilla extract. Gradually add the powdered sugar mixing on low speed until blended.
- Increase mixing speed and mix until fluffy. Don't over mix or it will become too soft. (If this happens, chill in the refrigerator for a few minutes to improve the consistency.)
Decorating the Cupcakes
We decorated these banana cupcakes very simply with a 1M star tip. Each cupcake is swirled with cream cheese frosting. For some of our piped swirls of frosting, the piping begins in the center and spirals outward (rose swirls).
For the others, the piping begins by outlining the edge of the cupcake first and spirals inward and upward.
Learn more about cupcake decorating in our Cupcake Decorating Basics tutorial, as well as our Elegant 1M Tip Piping Techniques video!
More Banana Cakes
We have so many more banana cakes for you to try! Some of our most popular are our Banana Pudding Cake, Banana Cream Cake, and Banana Split Cake, and Banana Pudding Cupcakes (from cake mix).
Recipe FAQs
Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy this recipe for banana cupcakes.
Have you made these cupcakes? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
Banana Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 ½ sticks (170g) unsalted butter, softened (softened so that it dents when touched but not completely room temperature)
- 2 cups (400g) sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 3 cups (342g) cake flour (see Note below if you do not have cake flour)
- 2 teaspoons (8g) baking powder
- ½ teaspoon 3g baking soda
- ½ teaspoon 3g salt
- 1 ½ cups (363g) buttermilk ( see Note below for buttermilk substitute)
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
- 3 (277g) medium bananas, mashed (approximately 1 ¼ cup)
Cream Cheese Frosting
- 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 packages (8 oz per package) Cream Cheese, softened
- 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla
- ½ teaspoon (2g) salt
- 6 cups (690g) confectioners sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees, line muffin pans with cupcake liners (this recipe makes about 30 cupcakes)
- In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt for 30 seconds, set aside.
- In another bowl, add the buttermilk, vanilla and mashed bananas. Blend and set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the slightly softened butter and mix at medium speed until smooth.
- Gradually add the sugar and continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of liquid. Mix just until well blended- be careful not to over-mix.
- Add the banana cake batter to the cupcake liners. We put about ¼ cup batter into each liner.
- Bake at 350℉ for 15-18 minutes. (Ours were done closer to 18 minutes.)
For the Cream Cheese Frosting
- Cut the butter into slices and add to the bowl of your mixer. Beat on low to medium speed until the butter is softened and smooth.
- Add the softened cream cheese to the butter, beating at low to medium speed until incorporated.
- Add the vanilla extract. Gradually add the powdered sugar beating on low speed until blended. Cover the bowl with a towel to keep down the cloud of powdered sugar.
- Increase mixing speed and beat until fluffy. Don't over beat or it will become too soft. If it becomes too soft, just refrigerate a short while to firm it up a bit.
- This frosting will pipe best if used while still slightly chilled. You can make it in advance, refrigerate and when ready to use let it soften slightly (do not microwave) and remix.
Notes
- Substitute for Buttermilk: To a measuring cup, add 1 Tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons vinegar or lemon juice. Add milk to the 1 ½ mark, stir. Wait 5 minutes and it is ready to use.
- Substitution for Cake Flour: Using all purpose flour (plain in the UK) to make Cake Flour: For each cup of flour in a recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour in the UK). This recipe has 3 cups of flour so you will measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend.
Loved This Recipe?!
They look wonderful! :-)
Thanks Teri!