Dad's Banana Birthday Cupcakes

Banana Birthday Cupcakes
Photo by Pam Stephan

Dad was going to have his 89th birthday and I wanted to do something special for him all through out the day. So I made a batch of these banana cupcakes and took them along to the cafe for breakfast. We shared these with our waitress and other diners, as part of our day-long celebration!

You may notice that the icing looks a bit irregular - well, Dad helped me ice them. We put each cupcake on a turntable and I squirted icing on them while Dad turned them around and around. Sometimes he missed the turntable and stuck his fingers into the icing. (We set those aside.) He thoroughly enjoyed helping out and he especially enjoyed doing Quality Control on these. Hey, somebody has to be the taste-tester around here!

Banana Birthday Cupcakes

Makes 2 dozen (24) cupcakes

Ingredients:
1 box of Betty Crocker Banana Cake Mix*
2 eggs
1/3 cup of vegetable oil
1 cup of water
1 very ripe banana, mashed well
1/2 teaspoon banana flavoring (or 1 tsp if you really like banana!)

1/2 teaspoon ground Allspice

1 16- ounce container of Buttercream Icing**
Powdered sugar

Cook it:
Preheat your oven to 375°F (350°F for dark or nonstick pans). Put cupcake papers in 24 cupcake pans.

In a small bowl, beat all wet ingredients well. Include the mashed banana, and leave no lumps.

In a large bowl, combine cake mix and Allspice. 

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, stir until batter is smooth.

Divide batter into 24 muffin cups, bake for 15-18 minutes in preheated oven.

Cool completely before frosting.

Frost it:
In a small bowl, sift 1 cup of  powdered sugar, to remove all lumps. Add contents of Buttercream Icing container, blend well. Use this to frost the cupcakes in any way you like.
After frosting, I like to put the cakes in the refrigerator to set the icing.

Banana Cupcakes, 2nd Try!
Photo by Karl Stephan

*Duncan Hines is also good

**Duncan Hines Creamy frosting, Buttercream