Goin' Bananas!

Fresh Banana Cupcakes

I can’t stand the site of rotting bananas on my kitchen counter. They taunt me.

I’ll be the first to tell anyone that I love the ingenuity of corn bread, zucchini muffins, and pumpkin pie. It’s brilliant to take something that everyone has totally exhausted their enthusiasm for eating and cleverly transform it into something irresistible. Thrilled is the baker who has led unsuspecting diners, who previously swore off root vegetables until the day they die, to wolf down a dozen mini-sweet-potato tarts. You just can’t help adoring how a lowly vegetable or humble fruit can win your heart over again and again through culinary translation.

But this isn’t one of those stories.

This story is about me and my epic battle with my thrifty nature, which is saddled with some deep-seeded guilt, that torments me when I face another bunch of bananas that refuses to toss themselves in the bin. I wish that bananas would have the dignity to die in private. But no, they slowly rot on the counter in full-view of the public. It’s embarrassing. And because they won’t go gracefully from this world to a better place, I feel a sense of obligation to give them a proper farewell.

Reluctantly, I am making Fresh Banana Cupcakes. I have no choice.

Usually I make Banana Bread, but I am feeling especially sympathetic for this bunch. The whole fiendish flock of freckled fruit has come and gone together…their sacrifice should not go unnoticed.

Honestly, I shouldn’t blame the fruit, I should blame my fickle family, who will eat a full bushel of bananas one week and leave every last one to languish the next. But pointing fingers never filled anyone’s bellies or alleviated anyone’s conscience and insured that no produce was bought in vain, the way a stack of moist and tender Fresh Banana Cupcakes will do.

The catalyst in our baking adventure.

Butter and sugar to the rescue.

Naked bananas in all of their glory.

It's a sugary, buttery, banana-y party

Okay, the glop is about as appealing as the bananas in their decaying peels.

But everything is pretty in a fluted paper cup.

As long as the majority of it makes it into the cups.

Yummy!

Fresh Banana Cupcakes
From the Fanny Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham

Ingredients:

8 tablespoons of butter (1 stick or ½ cup), softened

1 ½ cup sugar

1 ½ cup mashed bananas (about 3 medium-sized)

2 eggs

½ buttermilk

½ teaspoon baking soda

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt


Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the muffins pans, or line them with fluted paper baking cups, or spray them with non-stick coating.

Combine the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl or the beaker of a food processor, and beat until thoroughly blended. Add the mashed banana and beat to blend. Add the eggs and beat with a mixer or by hand for about 30 seconds, or in the food processor for about 10 seconds.

Stir in the buttermilk and baking soda together in a small bowl. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt, and sift them together onto a piece of waxed paper. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture in three stages, alternating with the buttermilk, beating just until smooth after each addition.

Spoon the batter into the prepared baking pans, filling each cup half full. Bake for about 12-15 minutes, or until a broom straw inserted into the center of a cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool for a moment, then turn out onto racks to cool completely. Serve with sweeten whipped cream, flavored with a little nutmeg, if you wish.