I made my usual chocolate cupakes replacing the milk/buttermilk with coconut milk, made a chocolate buttercream icing and decorated with desiccated coconut. I originally left it to my husband to judge the successfulness of these and although he claimed that you could taste the coconut milk in the cupcake I wasn't sure if he was being entirely honest with me...
Clearly I had to taste them myself. The cupcake came out a bit darker than usual and although it had a nice taste to them, the cake itself didn't have any coconut flavour at all! Big disappointment. I also found that the cake crumbled a lot quicker than usual, so next time I might try to mix some coconut cream powder with milk to get a stronger coconut flavour or make a simple vanilla-coconut base and pairing it with the chocolate buttercream. I might even add some desiccated coconut in the frosting for more coconut.
So my verdict is that although they were good chocolate cupcakes, they crumbled too quickly and the coconut flavour was hardly there. A lot of room for improvement!
However, luckily enough, they at least looked pretty nice!
Carine... I ll check the dark chocolate sections when I m in Belgium next month. I m sure that THE chocolate country has some very very very dark chocolate (or maybe not;) ). I ll bring you some stock if I find it! However, now that I think of it... dont they have that in Carrefour? I ll check also next time I m there:). Keep up the cupcake adventures!!! Njam, njaaaaaam. What about icecream-cupcakes? Not sure if you made that already and if that exists etc etc (I m learning about cupcakes by reading ur blogs ;) ) but Annelie is crazy about ice-cream and I m sure many other kids are :))))
ReplyDeleteHi Carine, my sister told me there is a programme called Junior apprentice on the BBC and their recent task was to sale cupcakes. She said it would be good for you to watch as they talked abour cupcake market, decoraions budgets etc. Here is a link with a summary about the show and I've also put a download link
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2010/05/27/junior-apprentice-how-the-candidates-rated-on-task-3-cupcakes-115875-22289461/
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5592633/Junior_Apprentice_S01E03
Lou x
@ Cat: ooh, Belgian chocolate sounds amazing! Basically I would love to get my hand on some Valhrona or Callebaut chocolate, and cocoa! I believe Valhrona is French, but Callebaut should be Belgian! I will check out Carrefour as well if I go there soon, we usually do our shopping at A&B.
ReplyDeleteAs for the icecream cupcakes, I have seen designs mixing the ice cream waffles and crumbing the adding to cupcakes inside and icing it, so it looks like an icecream. Another alternative would be to bake a cupcake and frost it with icecream, but that obviously only works when instantly served! :)
@Louise, great stuff, say many thanks to your sister for thinking of me!
If you want some Icelandic chocolate for your cupcakes, just name it and I´ll send you some :) And, here is a thought, how about making cupcakes with the small white liquorice balls that you love (djúpur)? Or with hraun or ris chocolate (hraun is a chocolate biscuit kind of chocolate bar with rice crispies, and ris is a chocolate bar with little maltesers-like balls in it). Also, nóa kropp and rjómasukkulaði. You can take a look at this site and see a few kinds of chocolates and sweets and if there is anything on there that you want to try in your cupcakes, I can send you some :) Here is the link: http://nammi.is/chocolate-c-184_65.html
ReplyDeleteLove and hug,
Þórunn
Thorunn, you are evil!! How can I resist? You know how much I love Icelandic liquorice-chocolate! Thanks for the link and the ideas, I will be getting back to you very shortly! ;) xxx
ReplyDelete