Cheeky Monkey Chocolate Cupcakes

I was in Lethbridge a couple of weeks ago visiting family, and we stopped into the old Spudnuts Shop that my Mom used to live down the street from as a kid (she loved that place when she was little). They are now called Crazy Cakes (kind of like Lethbridge's version of Crave). They still make spudnuts on Thursday's apparantly, but they also have an assortment of delicious cupcakes, one of which had banana flavored icing!!

I LOVE bananas, and I love artificial banana flavoring too.. (remember banana flavored penicillin as a kid?). So I naturally had to re-create this cupcake when I got home. I had a box of chocolate cake mix that I needed to use up, and I'm trying to make everything from scratch (I feel like box mixes are for when you have no time and need something quick) but I looked up some recipes that include boxed cake mix and I found some good ones on all recipes, so I kinda took some advice from a few different ones and came up with this delish, moist, chocolately cake!

Cake
1 box chocolate cake mix
1 pkg instant chocolate pudding
1 cup sour cream
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips (coated in flour to keep them from "sinking")

Icing
3 cups icing sugar
1 cup butter
2 tsp banana extract

24 banana chips for garnish.

Preheat the oven to 350 F - line your muffin tin with cupcake liners.

In a large bowl, mix together the cake and pudding mixes, sour cream, oil, eggs and vanilla. Once it has been mixed well, pour into your cupcake liners (about 3 - 4 tbsp of batter per cupcake liner).

Bake for about 18 to 22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cupcakes cool.

While the cupcakes are cooling make your icing by mixing together the icing sugar and butter until nice and creamy. Add your banana extract and mix that in well.

Once the cupcakes have cooled, ice them and add a banana chip for garnish.

Enjoy!!!