Banana Steamed Cupcakes

This is going to be my first demo class with hands-on for participants! I was told to keep things as simple as possible for my first try. The focus of my demo will be on showing the technique of beating egg and sugar with the electric mixer, and folding in the rest of the ingredients. The Singapore flag snowskin mooncake was purely demo so it was less involved. Here's my easy-peasy banana steamed cupcakes!

Banana Nutella flowers with MnMs ladybugs!

A peek at the texture and banana filled cupcakes...

I sliced off the top of the dome a little because it was smeared with Nutella.

I have a short downtime before the madness of icing/decorating over 200 macarons and filling about 250 macarons begin for the creative macaron book so I took the chance to make the steamed banana cakes for photography and taste test. I made steamed banana cupcake earlier on but with cat and bear designs. This design is simpler :). There is not much change in recipe except for the change in type of cupcake cases I used. As mentioned in my previous steamed cake post, I have chosen to use a method that involves beating whole eggs with sugar instead of just mixing wet and dry ingredients together with a hand whisk or spatula. The resulting texture is lighter and fluffier.

Ingredients (makes six 50x50mm cupcakes):
2 large eggs (at least 60g)
80g brown or white sugar (use more if you prefer sweeter cake. Mine is a lower sugar version.)
80g vegetable oil or melted butter (I used extra light olive oil but do use butter if you prefer the buttery fragrance)
140-150g mashed overripe banana (about 2 large bananas. Choose really really ripe ones for a more banana-y flavour)
1 tsp vanilla extract
140g cake flour*
2 tsp baking powder*
1/8 tsp salt*
1/4 tsp baking soda

Decoration:
Fresh small bananas
Lemon juice
Nutella
Red MnMs (optional)
Edible black marker (optional)

* You may replace with self-raising flour.

Clockwise from top left corner: 1) eggs, 2) mashed bananas with vanilla extract, 3) cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt sifted together, 4) brown sugar and 5) extra light olive oil. 

Steps:
1. Beat egg and sugar in a mixing bowl with electric mixer on high speed for at least 10-12 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl every 3-4 minutes with a spatula. Mixture should more than double in volume. When you drop the mixture from the beaters forming a letter "O", it should be able to hold the shape for several seconds before fading back into the bowl of mixture.

2. Drizzle oil onto the mixture and gently fold in a little at a time with a spatula. Be really gentle to avoid deflating the beaten egg mixture.

3. Add in mashed banana with vanilla extract a little at a time and gently fold in.

4. Add sifted flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt gradually and gently fold in.

5. Fill cupcake cases until almost full with batter. You may choose to add 1/2-1 tsp of nutella when the cases are about 2/3 full and fill the cupcake cases with more batter until almost full. Tap the cases on the table a few times to release trapped air bubbles. Do not use cupcake cases that have overlapping folded sides or it will open up during steaming. If you are using cases with folded sides, place the cupcake cases in a heatproof container that are slightly bigger than the cases like the smaller cupcake example below.

6. Steam for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Freshly steamed!

You may decorate the cupcakes with some banana slices and nutella.

Dip the banana slices in freshly squeezed lemon juice for about a minute before patting dry on paper towels. This will prevent the slices from browning quickly.

 Slice off the dome of the cupcake if you have trouble balancing the banana slices on top of the cake. Add a bit of Nutella in the middle, place the banana slices on top and top up the middle with more nutella. You may use a piping bag like I did or simply use regular plastic food bags or ziplock bags.

 I added some ladybugs for photography. These little critters are actually red MnMs with patterns drawn using black edible marker.

Please place them on the nutella patch instead of the banana slices if you do use MnMs for decoration. The red colouring will bleed onto the banana slices within a few minutes!

I hope you can try this simple "bake" at home :). I managed to make this for my kids within a busy morning with other things to do. Both kids gave this a thumbs up as they had it for dessert after lunch :). My parents had some the next day and they were still good and even better after re-steaming!

With lots of love,
Phay Shing