Special Delivery

Last week I was asked to make some type of cupcake with coconut. You see a certain someone, who will remain nameless but who does not live in my house...I swear... has been on a "coconut kick" for the past few weeks. Intrigued by all the options in front of me I settled on creating a coconut cream cupcake. Not one to conform when baking I borrowed parts of recipes and made some changes to the cake recipe as well. I have to let you know that the original recipe I found called for a whipped cream cheese icing. I had difficulty wrapping my head around a cupcake with smooth and creamy custard being topped with a cream cheese of any sort. The only part of the recipe I stuck with was the coconut cream custard filling, and boy am I glad I did. Toasting the coconut before adding it to the custard mixture was definitely a good choice, it adds so much more flavor to the coconut. I changed the icing to a stabilized whipped cream with coconut flavor and elevated a boxed coconut supreme cake mix. My trick to making my cake moist, especially the boxed cake mix, is adding a package of instant pudding mix. For this recipe I added white chocolate pudding. Now don't

go making a batch of pudding and adding it to your cake mix, just dump the dry pudding mix in with your cake mix and follow the instructions that are on the box for baking. I also substituted the water with coconut milk. I could not see allowing the rest of the coconut milk that did not need to go into the custard go to waste. I used a new technique to fill the cupcakes since I fought with my pastry filling tip during the wild berry cupcakes. It was so simple. I took a paring knife and cut a cone shape out of the center of the cupcake, filled them with custard, leveled out the parts that I had cut out of the cake and placed them back on top, covering the custard. At first I was worried that I could not remember which top went with which cupcake, but in the

 end it does not really matter since you are covering the top with icing. The end result was oh so good. Once they were complete we quickly delivered some of these sweet treats to the one whose heart desired them so. Driving away I quickly received a call that they passed the coconut craver's taste test. Tomorrow the rest will make their way to work to share. What about me you ask...well I will indulge in the extra custard and whipped topping for desert. Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on getting everything together for the "Could Cupcakes Be the Cure?" Team bake sale as part of The Great American Bake Sale. When I return to baking for the blog I will be making the Snickers cupcakes and you will be voting on a cupcake for the following week. If there is anything worth sharing happening then I will share with you. Until next time....