Banana Pudding Birthday Cupcakes

Another birthday...another round of cupcakes. My very good friend turned the big 2-5 yesterday and I, of course, volunteered my birthday baking services.  I originally had a cake in mind, but upon further review, I decided to go with banana pudding cupcakes.  A while ago I made banana pudding and I recall the birthday boy absolutely loving it so I went ahead and created a banana pudding cupcake which would welcome candles and sprinkles with open arms, so to speak.

I used this banana cupcake from allrecipes (less the apples) and then made the banana pudding I made a few months ago found here, as the filling.  Clearly I was in an allrecipes kind of mood and used this whipped cream recipe for the topping (it was amazing!). For an extra banana pudding touch, I placed a vanilla wafer at the bottom of each cupcake liner before filling.

I finished the cupcakes off with pastel confetti sprinkles and  candles.  Rather than using a decorating tip to "inject" the pudding into the center of the cuppies, I carefully sliced off the tops, scooped out the middles, and filled them with pudding.  I made sure to spread extra pudding on top of the sliced cupcake to create "adhesive" so that the tops wouldn't shift or slide off.  These cupcake were super dense because a) banana cake is always dense, and b) they were each filled with heavy filling! However, this were really delicious! The birthday boy + friends loved them. Enjoy!