













We all love these bad boy’s, there is something about cupcakes that we all love. Maybe it’s the lashings of buttercream, maybe it’s the fact its individual so we don’t have to share it with anybody else or the fact that we can be as creative as we want when it comes to decorating them? Whatever the reason cupcakes are really enjoying their time in the spotlight. People just can’t get enough of them and it’s been like that for the last few years.















That does include me, I love cupcakes because I don’t feel as though I am over indulging by having one, and they are small and cute with their creamy topping and sparkly decorations. And we will all agree never to speak of the second one and on occasion the third one that follows the first 😉















So lets talk about these ones. I recently started raiding our drinks cabinet for inspiration; alcohol can add wonderful flavours to cupcakes if used in the sponge the alcohol usually burns off leaving behind a nice mellow aftertaste in the flavour. We always have a lot of dark rum in the house, as my partner is a fan of it, his favourite is OVD ‘Old Vatted Demerara’ Rum. It’s Guyanese Rum and it’s the best selling dark rum in Scotland, its everywhere. I don’t know if it’s the sailor in him that’s such a fan of rum but he certainly is a fan. So I decided I was going to seal some and bake with it, OVD has a lovely dark sugar flavour to it.















Any dark rum would work or if preferred you could omit the rum altogether and you would still have a lovely cupcake but these are designed to be boozy.















So I started with dark rum, now I think most people who have read this blog before have noticed my obsession with all things banana. I love it; I eat several in a day and try to squeeze them into my baking as much as possible. And rum and banana are perfect bedfellows so it was a no brainer to have a banana-based cake, the basic batter is the same recipe as my nan’s banana cake which is worth checking out if you just want a plain banana cake. But I wanted to add a little something else as well. I love alcoholic coffees and rum and coffee are also a good pairing, but could I pull off rum banana and coffee cupcakes?















And the answer was a resounding yes! The 3 flavours compliment each other perfectly. The coffee and rum are very subtle in the sponge almost an after taste, but are boosted by the buttercream, which is a velvety rum and coffee combination.















And the finely fresh ground coffee sprinkled on top just gave it that perfect coffee finish.

This batter makes enough for 12 full size cupcakes, I had not long bought a mini cupcake pan and was looking for an excuse to use it so I made 6 normal cupcakes and 16 mini cupcakes. Which are lethal because you really can kid yourself into thinking eating 6 of them is perfectly fine 🙂















The crumb of this cake is so moist and honestly one will not be enough.















Recipe: