Make muffins with leftover buttercream frosting

#bakingexperiment leftover buttercream frosting used to make banana muffins!

So, I had over ripe bananas sitting on the kitchen counter and I thought that I should make muffins since no one is going to eat those bananas. Then I realized I don't have enough butter and as I looked around my fridge I saw leftover buttercream frosting that's about 3 weeks old. I took it out to soften and tasted it. The leftover buttercream tasted fine as good as the first day haha so I thought since buttercream frosting is essentially butter and sugar (both used to make muffins) why not just use the leftover buttercream frosting to make banana muffins? Man, I would throw out the leftover frosting anyways rather than let my child pick on it with a spoon so why not just try and see if it will work?

So, I went ahead and googled for banana muffins recipe and decided to use this recipe from allrecipe.com as a guideline before just winging it.

This was the vanilla cupcakes that lead me to make the buttercream frosting in the first place.

First of all, let me just be clear that my frosting recipe is not the really sweet one, my buttercream frosting recipe is a simple one as such:

1 cup salted butter

2 cups sugar

4 tbsp light cooking cream

3 tbsp vanilla extract

Beat all ingredients together until fluffy.

So, then I had extras that I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be using to frost cupcakes in the near future so I used the leftovers to make banana muffins and hey even though I won't say that it is the best banana muffins ever, it is edible, it allows me to make use of my leftover frosting and it is still moist. 

#bakingexperiment banana muffins with leftover buttercream frosting

So, my leftover frosting banana muffins recipe became as such:

1 cup frosting 

1/2 cup butter

1 egg

2 long ripe bananas (I used Del Monte)

2 tbsp brown sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup and 2 tbsp cake flour

pinch of salt

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup semisweet choc chips

*note that the sugar used is only 2tbsp because the frosting is already mostly sugar

How to make the muffins:

1. Beat the frosting, butter egg, sugar and vanilla extract together.

2. Add in the mashed bananas.

3. Separately in a dry bowl, mix your flour, salt and baking powder to ensure that the baking powder is evenly distributed and will not give a bitter taste at random bites of the muffin. Then fold in the flour mixture into the batter. Remember FOLD in don't whisk yeah?

4. Fold in the choc chips.

5. Pre-heat oven to 175C.

6 Original recipe calls for 25 minutes in the oven, but maybe I was using smaller sized muffin cups cos mine was cooked in under 10 minutes.

The end product: banana muffins with leftover buttercream frosting

Was it delicious? I thought it was but my two boys didn't like it..  this was just an experiment to show that yeah you can do something with leftover buttercream frosting instead of just letting it sit in the fridge for days (or in my case weeks) or in the freezer for months.. feel free to experiment with your own recipe..