banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and fruit leather flower pom poms

By the time I got to the sign-up sheet for the Teacher Appreciation Week luncheon at my son's preschool, there was nothing left to sign up for.  Literally nothing - all the slots were full.  But I wanted to make something to bring anyway, and since we had an abundance of overripe bananas at home, I decided to make banana cupcakes.

At first I was just going to top the cupcakes with a simple cream cheese frosting, but then a few days before the luncheon I saw this post at Best Friends for Frosting, which linked to this tutorial at Wedding Chicks - edible DIY flower pom poms made out of fruit leather!  Genius!

Making the pom poms was fairly simple.  The hardest part was getting the petals to stay put.  But the tutorial said to use toothpicks to help hold the petals in place while they dried, and that seemed to help.  But even though I let them dry overnight, they were still a bit soft and floppy the next morning.

The night before the luncheon, I made my banana cupcakes using my mom's banana bread recipe (stay tuned for a post on her banana bread later).  One batch of batter that would normally fill one 9-inch loaf pan ended up making 16 cupcakes.

I thought perhaps the cupcakes might come out more like muffins, since the recipe was meant for banana bread, but I sampled one after they were baked, and it was actually the perfect texture!

Next I whipped up a batch of cream cheese frosting and used a 1M tip to pipe large roses on top of the cupcakes.  And then I topped them with my pom poms.

I had only made 6 of the fruit leather pom poms (they were more time-consuming to make than I had anticipated!), so I topped the remaining cupcakes with sugar pearls and non-pareils.

I hope all the teachers enjoyed the cupcakes!  Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!