Coconut Lime Cupcakes

Long story short with these cupcakes. They are pure and simple delicious...if you like coconut.
If friends offer to make you birthday cupcakes for your outing and give no input what-so-ever you may end up with coconut cupcakes when you don't like coconut. If nothing else, we enjoyed making them and many more will enjoy eating them. Don't stay silent!

I will say that if you enjoy lime and/ or coconut, these cupcakes are absolutely delicious. They are tart and not overly sweet. The toasted coconut on the top gives it a great texture that pairs really well with the citrus lime flavor. I will definitely be making these again.

Super yummy delicious coconut lime cupcakes

Coconut Lime Cupcakes

Makes 12 regular or about 40 mini cupcakes

I doubled the recipe and it made 31 perfectly sized cupcakes. 

Ingredients

Cupcakes:

§                                 1/3 cup vegetable oil

§                                 3/4 cup granulated sugar

§                                 1 cup coconut milk

§                                 1/4 cup milk

§                                 1 tsp vanilla extract

§                                 1 tsp coconut extract 

§                                 1 tbsp lightly packed, finely grated lime zest

§                                 1 cup all purpose flour

§                                 1/2 tsp baking soda

§                                 1/2 tsp baking powder

§                                 1/4 tsp salt

§                                 1 cup sweetened coconut

Lime Buttercream Frosting:  (I thought this frosting was AMAZING and I don't even like frosting!)

§                                 2 sticks butter

§                                 1 tsp vanilla extract

§                                 1/4 cup fresh lime juice

§                                 3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

§                                 1 tsp finely grated lime zest (or more because its delicious)

Optional topping:

§                                 1 cup sweetened coconut, toasted in the oven until browned and crunchy

Directions

Can you tell I like green?

Cupcakes:

1.                              Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a cupcake pan with liners. 

2.                              In a medium bowl, mix together the vegetable oil and sugar. Add the coconut milk, milk, vanilla, coconut extract, and lime zest. Mix to combine.

3.                              Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix until smooth. Add the coconut and mix to incorporate.

4.                              Bake for about 20 minutes for regular cupcakes and slightly less for mini cupcakes, until the cupcake top springs back when touched and a toothpick inserted through the center comes out clean.

5.                              Cool completely on racks before icing.

Frosting:

1.                              Beat the butter until fluffy.

2.                              Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes.

3.                              Add the vanilla and lime juice, beat for another 5 to 7 minutes or so until fluffy.

4.                              Add the zest and mix to distribute.

5.                              Chill until ready to use.

To Assemble:

1.                              Heap the frosting onto the cupcakes or pipe onto cupcakes using a pastry bag and decorating tip of your choice.

2.                              If using toasted coconut on top, sprinkle the cupcakes with the toasted coconut and press lightly so that it adheres to the frosting.

3.                              Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

If any of you know how Teresa and I bake together, it usually involves me baking and Teresa doing the dishes, snitching batter and frosting and taking pictures. This venture was no different. 

Teresa's job while I finished frosting the cupcakes.

Everyone deserves a little reward. 

The frosting was absolutely amazing if you like limes. As you can see Teresa took the liberty of dipping the paddle from the frosting INTO the toasted coconut. 

Bitch Cake

I know I haven't baked or posted in a while but I'm super excited to see a cake of mine has gone viral. A few years ago my friend Teresa Prince was doing an amazing photography project reclaiming the word Bitch.

You can see all her awesome photos here. A lot of my friends posed for her with their talents and strengths being reclaimed with the term bitch. As I love baking I made sure that was what my picture encompassed.

I threw together a quick soft pink yellow cake. Donned it sweetly with the term bitch on it and rocked my sign.

Sugar and Spice and everything nice, that's what BITCHES are made of!

Admittedly, it wasn't my most beautiful cake, it wasn't anything special. I even used a cake mix, which goes against my better judgement but it wasn't about the cake, it was about the message.

However, today I logged into www.theberry.com and saw my cake! It was of course under the heading of being brutally honest. Check it out if you can. It's #8. As you can imagine I slightly freaked out. So to everyone who stole my photo off flicker, pinned it, or submitted it elsewhere. Thank you for allowing me to constantly stumble upon my cake in so many different mediums. 

Be sure to check out Teresa's project as she's the one who helped create the idea for the cake! 

Merry Christmas Cupcakes!

I know I haven't baked much in the last couple months but that's because school and work have been insane. So instead of squeezing it in and not doing what I want, I waited for the semester to be over and then baked with a vengeance. For the holidays, I thought it would be great to bake for the people I love. I decided to make 3 varieties of cupcakes, box them up and deliver them! I went and got 30 cake boxes and 30 cupcake inserts and a ridiculous amount of baking supplies! The rest were cute cake boxes full of red velvet, yellow and peppermint mocha cupcakes! Cupcakes! A lot of cupcakes!

Like I said, I started with a TON of supplies. I used 6.5 pounds of butter, 23 cups of flour, 8 cups of buttermilk, 9 pounds of powdered sugar...just to name a few!

I did all of my baking at my parent's house because they have double convection ovens and an additional kitchenaid. I had two ovens and two kitchen aids going at once! I was a baking machine!

I did a triple batch of Red Velvet which was taken from Cooks Illustrated:

·         2 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour

·         1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

·         1 pinch salt

·         1 cup buttermilk

·         1 tablespoon white vinegar

·         1 teaspoon vanilla extract

·         2 large eggs

·         2 tablespoons cocoa powder

·         2 tablespoons red food coloring (one 1-ounce bottle)

·         12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks)

·         1 1/2 cups sugar

Directions:

Whisk flour, baking soda and salt in medium bowl.

Whisk buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and eggs in large measuring cup.

Mix cocoa with food coloring in small bowl until smooth paste forms.

With stand mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter and sugar together until fluffy, about 2 minutes, scraping down bowl as necessary.

Add one-third of flour mixture and beat on medium-low speed until just incorporated, about 30 seconds.

Add half of buttermilk mixture and beat on low speed until combined, about 30 seconds.

Scrape down bowl as necessary and repeat with half of remaining flour mixture, remaining buttermilk mixture, and finally remaining flour mixture.

Scrape down bowl, add cocoa mixture and beat on medium speed until completely incorporated about 30 seconds.

Using rubber spatula give batter final stir.

Scrape into prepared pans and bake at 350* until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

The second cupcakes were Peppermint Mocha and they were delicious!

This recipe was taken from Annie's Eats Blog:

Ingredients:
For the cupcakes:
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2-3 tsp. espresso powder
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 cup whole milk
1 cup strong brewed coffee
1 tsp. peppermint extract
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs

For the frosting:
6 large egg whites
1¾ plus 2 tbsp. granulated sugar
1½ cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 tsp. peppermint extract
1-2 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:
To make the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 350° F.  Line two cupcake pans with paper liners.  In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt; stir together.  Combine the milk, coffee and peppermint extract in a liquid measuring cup.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and sugars.  Beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Blend in the eggs one at a time.   Alternately mix in the dry and liquid ingredients, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing just until incorporated.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cupcake liners.  Bake 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.   Let cool in the pan 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

I then frosted them with a peppermint buttercream frosting.

Lastly, I made a yellow cake with green butter cream:

The recipe for this cake can be found on a previous post!

I ended up making 235 cupcakes! It was an amazing process! It took me about 3.5 hours to bake and another couple hours to decorate everything. 

Here's the before:

and after:

Teresa took pictures of all the cupcakes for me and me with them all!

I'm lost in a sea of cupcakes and I'm loving every minute of it!

I honestly couldn't have asked for them to turn out better. I hope that everyone who got some enjoyed them. I loved making them and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a great New Years!

Also a big thank you to my parents for letting my turn their house into a bakery for a couple days! 

Thank you to Teresa for taking pictures of the cupcakes and making the awesome Warhol like cupcake art for me with my own cupcake! 

It really couldn't have gone better! Eat up! 

Gooey Butter and some Citrus to boot!

As it has been a while since I did any extensive baking I decided to go a little crazy tonight. With the help of my lovely, long time friend Teresa we set upon making my kitchen a mess and creating just short of 100 cupcakes. Quite insane but a lot of fun. I couldn't for the life of me decide what to bake so I asked the world of Facebook whether I should make Strawberry Basil (which will happen eventually), Chocolate Peanut Butter Bacon, or Orange Lime. The overwhelming response was the Orange and Lime. I set upon finding a recipe and found one that added Chardonnay to the list. I figured it was worth a shot. However, I made the mistake of not reading the recipe throughly enough and realized only later that I did not own a blender, which I apparently needed. I made adaptations as I thought would work.

The recipe I found was:

Citrus Chardonnay Cupcakes

Cake Ingredients:
3 ¼ c. cake flour
1 c. room temp butter
2 ¼ c. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
4 eggs
2 t. vanilla
¼ t. salt
3 peeled Satsuma oranges
3 key limes, chopped and seeds removed
¼ c. chardonnay wine (recommended to use non-oak aged wine)
1 c. plain greek yogurt
3 T. key lime juice
3 peeled Satsuma oranges
1 c. brown sugar

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  Combine dry ingredients in a bowl.
• In a blender combine satsumas, key limes, key lime juice, chardonnay, eggs, yogurt and blend until mixture is a milkshake like consistency.
• In a separate bowl cream together sugar, butter and vanilla.
  Slowly mix blender mixture into butter sugar mixture and when that is mixed add
  dry ingredients and mix well.
• Line the cupcake tins and place a Satsuma orange slice and ¼ t. at the bottom of each cup. Fill cups with the batter and bake on bottom rack 45 min or until done.

Frosting Ingredients:
8 oz. marscapone cheese
1 ½ c. confectionary sugar
¼ c. key lime juice
¼ c. chardonnay (recommended to use non-oak aged wine)

Directions:
Combine ingredients for frosting and refrigerate, use to frost cooled cupcakes.

I didn't use the fancy oranges and limes but substituted the normal varieties of each. Since I didn't have a blender I just put all the the ingredients I was supposed to blend into the mixer and put in the whisk and blended it for a while. I then put the mixture through a sieve and threw out all of the left overs. It worked out quite well. The first round I baked though fell a little bit but that was easily fixed by adding a bit more flour to the batter. They then turned out lovely. 

The frosting was very easy to make. I think the cupcakes were delicious and quite easy on the eyes. 

I topped the cupcakes off with candied orange and lime slices. They took a little bit of time to make but they were actually quite easy. With a little help from a How To article I was able to whip them up quickly. 

http://candy.about.com/od/fruitcandy/ss/candiedpeel_sbs.htm

I did it! Go me!

Look at all those yummy cupcakes!!!

We were feeling adventurous and decided to make two varieties of cupcakes. Teresa had a stint in St. Louis and fell madly in love with something called Gooey Butter Cake. Apparently it is original to St. Louis and can really only be found there. She found a recipe and we set upon making them. They are a messy cupcake but very good indeed. I'm a fan for certain. 

Gooey Butter Cupcakes

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake - United Cakes of America by Warren Brown

Dry Ingredients

All purpose flour - 12 ounces (2 1/2 cups)

Baking Powder - 1 1/2 tsp

Salt - 3/4 tsp

Wet Ingredients

Milk - 3/4 cup

Buttermilk - 3/4 cup

Vanilla Extract - 1 1/2 tsp

Creaming Ingredients

Unsalted Butter - 3 ounce (6 tbsp)

Vegetable Shortening - 3 ounces (6 tbsp)

Superfine granulated sugar - 15 ounces (2 cups less 2 tbsp)

Vanilla Bean, seed only - 1/2 bean

Eggs -  3

For the Topping

Cream Cheese - 8 ounces

Confectioners' sugar - 16 ounces (4 cups)

Vanilla Bean or Extract - 1 bean seeded or 1 tsp

Eggs - 3

Milk - 1/2 cup

Yield: One 12 inch round cake or 18 cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 335 F and place the rack in the centre.  Line the bottom of a 12 inch round cake pan with parchment or lightly coat a cupcake tray with non-stick oil-and-starch spray and place paper liners in the cups.  (I just sprayed the edges of the holes with easy bake spray before putting my cases in).

2. Measure the dry ingredients and wet ingredients into separate bowls. Whisk each to combine.

3. Measure the Butter, shortening, sugar and vanilla bean into the bowl of a free standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.  Combine on a medium to low speed for about 5 minutes.

4. Add the eggs one at a time to the creamed butter mixture, allowing each to fully incorporate before adding the next.

5. Alternately add the dry and wet ingredients about a quarter at a time.  Scrape the bowl to the bottom and mix for 20 seconds on a low speed.

6.  Scoop the batter into prepared pans.  (I filled the cupcake cases just under half full with this batter, when you top with the cheesecake batter you want the cupcake cases to end up about two thirds full, I have no idea if this is right the recipe doesn't specify, I might try a bit more cheesecake batter next time just to see).

7. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese on a medium speed until smooth, about 1 minute.  Add the rest of the ingredients (including any variations, see below) and mix for about 4 minutes.  Don't worry if  lumps of  cream cheese remain, they will disappear during baking.

8. Pour the mixture onto the cake batter in the cake pan or scoop it into the individual cupcake liners.  For the cupcakes, bake for 18-24 minutes; for the cake, bake for approximately 35 minutes, or until the sides are lightly browned and a wooden skewer inserted into the centre comes out with just a few crumbs on it.

9. Sprinkle the cakes or cupcakes with confectioners' sugar if you like before serving.

** I claim no ownership of this recipe **

  

We made quite a bit of cupcakes. I have quite a kitchen to clean up but it was well worth the mess. Hopefully my family and co workers will enjoy the cupcakes!