I made these for the birthday of a colleague who cannot eat gluten (taking lots of precautions including cleaning everything before use because everything in my kitchen is covered with flour dust from milling all the time, and using the mill I keep gluten-free for the milling) and loves banana bread. I dislike most banana bread because it is too heavy, too sweet, and bland. These cupcakes are light, buttery, not too sweet for me, and spicy enough to be interesting. And the Date-Coconut-Caramel sauce (not my invention, see below) was the brilliant finishing touch.
Banana Cupcakes with Date-Coconut Caramel Sauce
Mill together
200 grams sorghum
50 grams sweet brown rice
6 allspice
About 3 pieces mace
6 Long peppers
1/2 teaspoon whole mahleb
(Substitute about 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice, 1/2 teaspoon ground mace or freshly ground nutmeg, scant 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground long pepper or fresh ground black pepper plus a pinch of ground cardamom, and 1/2 teaspoon ground mahleb seeds or 1 teaspoon almond extract)
Remove a portion of the fresh ground flour to food processor and add
185 grams Blue Stripes Banana cacao dried fruit 'gummies'** (packages are 125 grams but I had one and a half on hand)
Blitz in food processor until the dried fruit bits are very fine pieces (sesame-seed like) so they can hydrate and soften by the end of baking.
50 grams toasted coconut milk powder*
45 grams flax seed, ground very fine
2/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
100 grams roasted unsalted cashews, grated/ground to a light sandy texture (I use my rotary nut grater for this)
Sift/whisk in until all evenly blended
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
Beat into flour until thoroughly mixed
1 1/2 C thoroughly mashed ripe bananas (premixed with one of the eggs and left to sit for 30 minutes if not fully ripe)
Beat until smooth
3 eggs (remember to the one you used to speed-ripen the bananas, if you did that)
Beat in one by one and then beat in enough water to make a thick but spoonable batter. Spoon into muffin cups (they can be basically full, they rose to a nice dome but did not overtop the cups) and bake 375°F degrees about 20 minutes (internal temp about 205 degrees).
While they cool, prepare date-coconut-caramel as a dip for the topping. I tweaked the original Date Caramel recipe from bakedbymelissa.com a little bit by using powdered coconut milk, some toasted* and some not.
I used all 16 large and plump medjool dates in the package I bought, reserved the soaking liquid, zapped in the food processor with some of their soaking liquid, added a scoop of the toasted coconut milk powder, and another 2 scoops of the untoasted coconut milk powder, and then I think all of the rest of the soaking liquid plus some extra water to make a puree just thick enough to dip and coat the top of the cupcakes without dripping down the sides.
Next time I will cut this down because this made twice as much as I needed for 2 dozen cupcakes.
*I always keep coconut milk powder on hand and not coconut milk, and I toast some of it from time to time in the oven or in a skillet for extra flavor oomph.
**I would probably substitute dried unsweetened Philippine mango if I did not happen to have this on hand; as I made it, the banana flavor was heightened by the dried banana and the dried cacao fruit is quite tart and not very chocolatey.
