These Peanut Butter Stuffed Double Chocolate Banana Cupcakes are bursting with rich chocolate, banana and peanut butter flavor! A peanut butter buckeye is stuffed inside a moist chocolate banana cupcake and all topped off with a Reese's peanut butter frosting!
I wracked my brain to think of a more concise name for these cupcakes. Really, I did. Somehow a shorter, cuter, catchier name just didn’t fit. In reality this lengthy name doesn’t begin to describe just how wonderful these Peanut Butter Stuffed Double Chocolate Banana Cupcakes are!
Did you think it couldn't get much better than a double chocolate banana cupcake topped with a luscious peanut butter icing? Then I probably shouldn't tell you that I took delicious one step further with a peanut butter buckeye filling baked right inside.
That's right. I said peanut butter inside!
And while that covert buckeye filling is hiding away inside, pillowy swirls of Reese's peanut butter frosting float atop the cupcake.
It's a beautiful thing.
I understand. All this deliciousness in one small package can be overwhelming. Just breathe.
We’ll make it.
Each component of these Peanut Butter Stuffed Double Chocolate Banana Cupcakes would be heavenly alone; any combination of two elements would be downright divine; but all three together will put you over the edge! These are the type of cupcakes that could start a riot if one is not careful.
The Reese’s peanut butter frosting is the same one that I created for my Reese’s Peanut Butter Blondies and the peanut butter filling is like the peanut buttery center of a Buckeye. I adapted my Double Chocolate Banana Muffin recipe to create the Double Chocolate Banana cupcakes, and they are superb!
Next time you have some slightly over-ripe bananas (not super, duper over ripe because this is not the recipe for those) don’t even think about making banana bread. Make these beauties instead. In fact, it would be justifiable to buy overripe bananas for this recipe.
I did. And I have no regrets.
Peanut Butter Stuffed Double Chocolate Banana Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the Cupcakes:
- 2 cups cake flour (sifted)
- ½ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup whole milk
- ½ cup dark brown sugar (packed )
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 ½ cups butter (softened)
- 1 ½ cups mashed (ripe bananas (~3 large bananas))
- ¾ cups mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
For the Buckeye Filling:
- ½ cup powdered sugar (+ 2 tablespoons )
- 6 tablespoons creamy peanut butter (I use Jiff)
- 2 tablespoons butter (room temperature)
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
For the Reese’s Peanut Butter Icing:
- 6 tablespoons butter (unsalted)
- ½ cup evaporated milk
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 6 oz Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips
- 1 ½ cups powdered sugar (sifted )
Instructions
Make the Buckeyes
- First make your Buckeye filling. It will freeze into balls while we make the cupcakes.
- Beat together all ingredients in a bowl until combined and mixture is dry yet holds together. You might need to add additional powdered sugar. Roll into 1-inch balls, place on baking sheet and freeze until you are ready to use them.
Prepare Cupcakes
- Pre-heat oven to 350° F. Line 12 muffin tins with liners. I double up on my liners just to make sure the cupcakes stay moist.
- Sift the first five ingredients together in a medium bowl and set aside. I measure my flour by spooning flour into my baking cup directly from the bag until it is slightly mounded. Level with a sharp knife. Do not tap cup or in any way compact your flour.
- Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy.
- Add eggs and vanilla; beat until combined
- Alternately add dry ingredients and the milk; beginning and ending with flour mixture. I did 2 additions of milk and 3 of the flour mixture. Mix only until just combined. Be careful not to over mix.
- Fold in bananas and chips only until banana is distributed throughout batter.
- Scoop enough batter into each tin to reach half way up the liner. Press a buckeye ball deep into each tin but not deep enough to reach the bottom. Cover the balls with the rest of the batter. They should be about ¾ full. Bake at 350° F for ~20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with only some crumbs attached. Make sure that you didn’t just hit a chocolate chip because melted chocolate can make your muffins appear underdone. We don’t want that!
- Allow to cool 5 minutes in the tins. Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
- When your cupcakes are almost cool, start making your icing.
For the Icing:
- Combine butter, milk, peanut butter chips and salt in a heatproof bowl; cook over a pan of simmering water (bain marie) until butter is melted and mixture is hot to the touch. Stir frequently.
- Cool. This step only takes about 15 minutes, especially if you stir it frequently. You want the peanut butter mixture to be very thick. So thick that it will not drop off your spatula.
- Gradually add in powdered sugar and beat until thick enough to pipe. You will want it to hold stiff peaks.
- Pipe onto cooled cupcakes. If you plan on piping your frosting as tall as mine in the photos, you will want to double this recipe, but I think it’s too much. If I were simply going to eat them, I would have used less.
I truly was so excited for this recipe but I feel like every step just did not go as directed. I don’t own a bakery but am a great baker. As someone mentioned the icing takes awhile to cool it needs to be refrigerated. 12 cupcakes??? I got 27! And not enough frosting. Cake felt dry which maybe was over baking but definitely not the banana chocolate kick I was hoping for! Really bummed as I was hoping to love this!
Once I saw this recipe I HAD to make it! This is an excellent cupcake with 3 of my favorite things in the whole world!
The chocolate cake was chocolatey (yeh!!), very moist and I decided to leave some chunks of bananas in the batter rather than blend completely. Call me crazy but I like chunky bananas. I do the same thing in my banana bread. I cut the peanut butter buckeyes in half as they'd take up most of the cupcake at full size (not that there's anything wrong with that.) Also used extra crunchy Jif which added a nice crunch and texture.
The peanut butter frosting was a big hit, smooth, and way too sweet to my taste. It does NOT take 15 minutes to cool - try an hour and a half: on the counter, in the fridge, stirring, whipping, back in the fridge. Ultimately piped well. I'd rather make it with real peanut butter rather than with Reese's chips and save the time with multiple ingredients and a double boiler.
This recipe made 29 normal sized cupcakes for me. They all sank in the middle a little bit so there was extra room for frosting. I doubled the frosting recipe for my 29 cupcakes and had a little leftover.
I'm so glad you enjoyed them Dana! I see no reason why you couldn't use peanut butter in place of the melted Reeses chips. Especially now that they sell Reeses peanut butter! And then you wouldn't need to wait for it to cool.
I want every part of this cupcake! Totally in love.
Every part is sooo good! And all together?! Swoon!
drooling!! looks amazing!!
Thanks Linz!! It's payback for making me drool all over your adorable baby pictures!!!!
love all the frosting. they look great!
Thanks, dina
Here I am, 4 in the morning, can't sleep and I come across these cupcakes. They look so good, especially for someone with a sweet tooth like me. Now I'm going to be dreaming about these peanut butter stuffed cupcakes. They look beautiful! And that frosting! YUM!
These are certainly not sleep inducing! Well, maybe if you ate, like, 4 of them. I would probably drift off into a double chocolate banana peanut butter coma!
Beeeeautiful! Linds, you had me "peanut butter stuffed" let alone "chocolate banana cupcakes"! I. DIE. I am nutty (ha!) for peanut butter frosting of any kind and Buckeyes (covert or not) and these cupcakes would be my ultimate fav! A must make ASAP recipe for sure. Thanks for sharing! P.S. Your blog is taking forever to load and is acting up (page is jumpy). Have you experienced any problems with it? You might want to check into it. 🙂
I know, these cupcakes are a trifecta of goodness. It's impossible to resist! I hope you do make them! Thanks for letting me know about the site. I'll call my host and see if something is wrong.
HOLD THE PHONE!!! These are chocolate banana cupcakes-YUM-aaaand they're topped with beautious pb frosting and AND they have buckeye filling??!!!
AGHJHHHHHHH!
LOL! I know right??! Cupcakes this sinfully delicious should be illegal or something.
Aughhhhhhhhh!!! Oh my gosh - what an amazingly gorgeous cupcake! I must have these now! And, the photos? They are seriously over the top gorgeous! I want to reach into my screen and grab one for each hand! And they sound fantastic. I think they're worthy of a super long name! 🙂
Thanks, Kristi! One for each hand ALOL! They are so good! I was helpless in the face of them! Helpless!