Beware of baking experiments. As I have written before, I don’t taste any of these things, so the experiments especially are… well, totally experimental. This means that no one has tasted them before they end up on offer in the workplace, making my colleagues unwitting (even if entirely willing) lab rats. People take their taste buds into their own, eh, hands, every time – although this rings true more starkly when I am making something I have never attempted before.

Behold the banoffee cupcake, which is aptly named for banana and toffee mixed together. I made a lightly toffee-flavored cupcake and will fill it with caramel and banana and frost with dulce de leche Swiss buttercream. I doubt that this will be the final word in banoffee cupcake experimentation, however.

Banoffee cupcakes
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons butter, softened
1 1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup neutral-flavored vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup dulce de leche (or some kind of thick caramel)

Preheat oven to 175C.

Whisk dry ingredients together and set aside. Cream butter and sugar, add the eggs, one at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl after each addition. Add the vanilla and oil. Alternately add the dry ingredient mixture with the buttermilk in three additions. Add the half-cup of dulce de leche.

Put batter into cupcake liners and bake – probably about 15 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. I used larger cupcake liners and it took closer to 35 minutes for mine to bake through.

To assemble, you can decide for yourself how best to deal with it. I am going to cut the center out of the cupcake and fill with dulce de leche and banana slices and frost with dulce de leche frosting. Maybe sprinkle some graham cracker crumbs and/or crushed Daim candy on top. We shall see.

This would be infinitely easier in cake form rather than individual cupcakes.