My son recently turned 2. Last year I made a cake (half yellow/half chocolate) and decorated it with an elephant I drew freehand in icing and made him a personal cupcake to nom — the whole shebang. This year I was a week out from his big day and just did not have it in me. I didn’t trust my artistic skills to pull off a train my little boy would recognize.

So I decided on cupcakes and when I bought the party supplies, I picked up some Thomas the Tank Engine cardboard “confetti.” I used some of the large pieces to decorate the cupcakes and voila!

I wanted to make the cupcakes from scratch and I wanted one flavor to be banana. But I wanted a banana cake, not a banana bread muffin. So I went on the hunt. I was inspired by this one and it was great. Light and airy like a cake. I topped it with a chocolate buttercream. The other flavor was red velvet with cream cheese icing, but that’s for another time.

Banana Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup (two average-sized) mashed very ripe banana (I freeze bananas in the peel once they get to too dark and thaw them out individually for baking)
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder

Directions

1. In a large bowl, mix together butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Set aside.
2. In another bowl, sift together flour, salt, soda and baking powder. Add these dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Add buttermilk and bananas to the batter. Beat together well.
3. Place cupcake liners in a muffin pan. This recipe will make a dozen cupcakes, divide the batter accordingly. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick is inserted into a cupcake and comes out clean.