I had planned a different post for today, but it’s raining cats and dogs here so I thought I’d share an easy kids’ cupcake recipe for anyone else in danger of going stir crazy like me.

These banana & raisin cupcakes are healthy, contain only naturally occurring sugar, take less than five minutes to prepare – even with a small person ‘helping’ – and contain just four ingredients.

They really couldn’t be easier and are a perfect rainy day activity (anything to avoid the dreaded paint tin). The recipe is taken from Felicity Bertin & Emma Ogden-Hooper’s Baby-Led Weaning Recipe Book, but I tend to adapt it depending on what I’ve got in the cupboard:

Banana & raisin ‘bread’

Preparation time: 5 minutes (honestly!)
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Makes: 9 cupcakes or muffins, or one small loaf
Mess: minimal

Ingredients

4 tablespoons of self-raising flour
1 egg
2-3 mushy bananas
handful of raisins

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees, fan 160 degrees, gas mark 4.
Put all of the ingredients in a bowl and mush together with your hands (BB loves this bit. Only marginally more than me). If you don’t have raisins any dried fruit will do – today’s offering also includes cranberries, and I’ve used fresh blueberries in the past too. Spoon into either a greased loaf tin, cupcake cases or (greased) muffin tin (whatever mood takes you) and bake in the oven until golden brown. (Note: if you’re making a loaf this will take longer to bake than individual cupcakes or muffins).

And that’s it. We make these time and time again, and they’ve always been a firm favourite in our house. I tend to store them in the fridge as they do have a habit of turning brown if left in a tin owing to the banana content, but they don’t tend to stick around for very long so it’s not really an issue.

Enjoy!