Chocolate and coconut cupcakes

Last week I found myself in the chocolate section at the supermarket. Nothing unusual for me since I wanted to stock up on dark chocolate with more than 70% cocoa solids, and hoping that by some miracle I would find something higher than 70% this time (85% cocoa solids, anyone?) While studying the chocolates and desparing over the fact that one 72% dark chocolate also contains almonds (obviously no good for me since I'll be melting and using the chocolate in cupcakes and frosting) my eyes caught the summery white and blue cover of a bar of Bounty chocolate. Suddenly I remember that I once had an idea of creating a Bounty-like cupcakes, i.e. combining chocolate and coconut! I love coconut, so when some family members had their name's day I already knew what cupcakes to make - chocolate and coconut cupcakes; sounds yummy, doesn't it?

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!

Easter cupcakes

I know Easter is over, but I haven't had time to write this post earlier, so here goes!

My parents were visiting over from Norway and as we were going to Xalkidiki for the Easter weekend and I knew some neighbours and friends would be there as well I decided to make some cupcakes for everyone to enjoy. For me Easter treats are definitely all about chocolate (mostly together with marzipan), so clearly had to make chocolate cupcakes! A friend had brought some speckled chocolate eggs over from the UK, but I decided to make mini cupcakes for the first time, so had to make some marzipan eggs for the decoration this time. Lucikly I had bought some marizpan a few weeks earlier, so no need to make homemade marzipan this time!

I also had a banana that needed to be used so added that to the batter for lovely moist chocolate and banana cupcakes and teamed it with a chocolate cream cheese frosting. I definitely prefer the chocolate cream cheese frosting to the chocolate buttercream frosting. I wanted to create a little hen's nest with the eggs on for the frosting decoration, but apparently I am so used to make fairly nice topped swirls, so I got slightly carried away and forgot about the nest. A few cupcakes did have a little nest-feeling to it though! :)







I wanted to make another flavour in addition to the chocolate cupcakes as not everyone loves chocolate as much as I do, so was thinking of trying out a red velvet recipe, but knowing the red velvet cupcakes also contain cocoa I decided to go for a citrusy cupcake instead - lime cupcakes with lime cream cheese frosting. The recipe I got makes a moist and lovely tasting lime cupcake and the zest in the frosting really brings out the lime flavour - these were a big hit!





Although I went to bed late after making these cupcakes (obviously since I had started really late in the evening!) I loved, loved, loved making these mini cupcakes! They do not fill you up and leaves plenty of space to try a few flavours! I will definitely make more mini cupcakes from now on!

And so I leave you with this photo of five cute mini Easter cupcakes!