I’m referring to coconut. Like cilantro, Brussels sprouts or sushi, coconut is one of those foods that people feel strongly about in one direction or the other. Fortunately I’m pro-cilantro, Brussels sprouts and coconut. No, I don’t like sushi. It’s a raw fish and/or seaweed thing. But that’s not the point today.

Today the point is this: If you love coconut, you will love these coconut lime cupcakes. Assuming that you like limes. But I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who was opposed to limes.

I’ve made these cupcakes numerous times in the past and they’re frequently requested by people who have tried them before. I think they’re second only to carrot cupcakes. This most recent batch was made for a cookout on the 4th of July. Joel requested that I make them despite the fact that we didn’t know how the people at the cookout felt about coconut. Fortunately I think most of the people liked coconut and the rest of them just had to go without a delicious cupcake. Their loss. I also shared some with a neighbor and her mom liked them so much that she requested the recipe. And since I needed to post something on my website anyway, here it is!

The recipe for these is from the fantastic Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World cookbook. If you haven’t ever flipped through this cookbook, it’s worth doing just for cupcake ideas.

I did make a number of changes to the original recipe and my version isn’t vegan as I used real dairy products instead of soy ones. I’ve made them the true vegan way as well and really couldn’t tell the difference. The recipe below is my non-vegan adapted version as it’s a lot cheaper to make them this way. Also, the original called for coconut oil and quite frankly, I am not willing to buy coconut oil as it’s grossly expensive and these cupcakes taste plenty coconutty without it.

Coconut Lime Cupcakes

Slightly adapted from recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Makes 12 regular or about 40 mini cupcakes

Ingredients

Cupcakes:

• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup coconut milk (I use the light variety)
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp coconut extract (if you don’t have it, I’ve subbed extra vanilla before and all was well)
• 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:

• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
• 3 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tsp finely grated lime zest (I like lime a lot and I used more like 1 heaping tablespoon. But that’s your call!)

Optional topping:

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

Directions

Cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a cupcake pan with liners. If making mini cupcakes, you’ll probably want to bake these in 2 batches.
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 shortening and margarine together until combined well and 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.

Tweet This Post 

No long, drawn out descriptions from me today. All you need to know is that you need to make this gingerbread cake with coffee icing. Why? Because it’s easy and delicious and I loved it even though I don’t particularly like gingerbread. With loads of spices, dark beer, coffee, cocoa powder and molasses, how could I not love it?

The recipe is from The Craft of Baking by Karen Demasco and Mindy Fox (which is a pretty cool cookbook that I’ll purchase someday soon). The actual recipe is for 18 cupcakes. I made a bundt cake instead because I currently don’t own any muffin tins for making cupcakes (that’s a long story for some other day). I didn’t alter the size of the recipe at all. Batter for 18 cupcakes is apparently exactly the right amount of batter for a bundt cake.

Other than making cake instead of cupcakes, the only change I really made was the use of porter instead of stout. Yes, I live on the edge when it comes to recipe alterations. I also skipped the candied ginger on top as I truly believe that would have been weird on a cake.

Since this is a lazy post and since NPR was kind enough to post the recipe on their website, I’m not posting it here.

P.S. If you’ve read this far and care, I have no wedding plans to blab about at the moment. We’re still figuring out the when and where.

Tweet This Post 

Actually, I’m not really writing a blog post. I’m just summing up 2009 with photos taken during the last 365 days.

First up are some of my favorites of the thousands of photos I took in 2009. It was really hard to narrow these down to just a handful of favorites and I hope to take just as many (or more) pictures in 2010!

Then there’s me through the year. Putting this together wasn’t so easy as both the boyfriend and I have discovered that we don’t take a whole lot of pictures of ourselves. We’re going to try harder next year…and the mosaic I create on 12/31/2010 will be easier to create!

I hope that everyone has had a great year and best wishes for 2010!

Tweet This Post 

As much as I love the fluffy buttercream frosting I’ve been making near constantly for almost 2 years, it was time to make a new friend in the frosting world. Maybe a wordly, sophisticated frosting that isn’t so reliant on powdered sugar? Swiss meringue buttercream frosting is that new friend and possibly a friend for life.

Swiss meringue buttercream is my new favorite frosting and it should be yours as well. The fluffy buttercream has been pushed aside for the not-too-sweet, super smooth and shiny Swiss meringue buttercream frosting. While the buttercream I’d been making called for about a million cups of powdered sugar, the new Swiss meringue buttercream calls for barely a cup. It’s a healthier option…if you can look past the copious quantities of actual butter in this frosting. I have. And so should you.

As my first venture into this new frosting world, I made the frosting to go with a batch of mini chocolate cupcakes. Both the cupcakes and the frosting recipes are from Martha Stewart‘s relatively recent Cupcakes cookbook. Just so you know, the One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes are pretty killer…and the recipe yields a LOT of mini cupcakes. 58 to be exact. It yielded so many cupcakes that we kept a bunch and both the boyfriend and I took lots of them to our respective offices…where they were met with high praise. Praise like “This is my favorite thing you’ve ever made!” and “It was so good, it made you want to slap your mother.” And it’s not like these people haven’t had lots of baked goodies from me in the past…the cupcakes were just that good.

Back to the frosting. For the mini chocolate cupcakes, I made a coffee version of the frosting following Martha’s careful instructions. Since then I’ve also made a batch of white cupcakes with a chocolate version of the frosting. Both versions are super-duper-amazingly delicious. Next I’ll try a plain version.

Let it be known that I made the frosting despite some old fears of screwing up what looks to be a fussy recipe. In fact, it was not a fussy recipe. It’s a little time consuming only because the mixer has to whip the meringue for a long time. Other than that, it couldn’t have been easier. I should probably note that in order to really make this frosting successfully, you should use a stand mixer. A hand mixer might work but you’ll be awfully tired of using it by the end. With the stand mixer, you can walk away and do other things while it’s whipping. If you’re like me, the other things you’ll do will probably be the dishes.

For the number of mini cupcakes I made, I prepared just a half batch of the frosting recipe shown below. Everything divided in half well other than the egg whites…so I used three of those. If you’re planning to use this frosting for a regular cake, make the full recipe. Or if you like your normal sized cupcakes heavily frosted with a bowl of extra frosting just to eat, make the full recipe.

One more comment: If you (or your office mates) love coffee, definitely try the coffee variation. My office mates actually ate their cupcakes in the morning…with their coffee.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes

Makes about 5 cups

Ingredients

• 5 large egg whites
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons, room temperature
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Directions

1. Combine egg whites, sugar, and salt in the heatproof bowl of a standing mixer set over a pan of simmering water.
2. Whisk constantly by hand until mixture is warm to the touch and sugar has dissolved (the mixture should feel completely smooth when rubbed between your fingertips).
3. Attach the bowl to the mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Starting on low and gradually increasing to medium-high speed, whisk until stiff (but not dry) peaks form.
4. Continue mixing until the mixture is fluffy and glossy, and completely cool (test by touching the bottom of the bowl), about 10 minutes.
5. With mixer on medium-low speed, add the butter a few tablespoons at a time, mixing well after each addition.
6. Once all butter has been added, whisk in vanilla.
7. Switch to the paddle attachment, and continue beating on low speed until all air bubbles are eliminated, about 2 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl with a flexible spatula, and continue beating until the frosting is completely smooth.
8. Keep buttercream at room temperature if using the same day, or transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate up to 3 days or freeze up to 1 month.
9. Before using, bring to room temperature and beat with paddle attachment on low speed until smooth again, about 5 minutes.

Coffee Variation: Mix 2 tablespoons good quality instant espresso powder (do not use instant coffee) with the vanilla extract. Stir until espresso powder is mostly dissolved and add to frosting in step 6.

Tweet This Post 

One of my friends wanted to come over to our house for a visit. But she had ulterior motives and she was up front about them. She wanted cupcakes. Who am I not to indulge a request for cupcakes? Especially if the person requesting the cupcakes is more than willing to help make them and to chip in for ingredients? Especially if the friend’s kitchen isn’t very well-equipped for baking and mine might very well be over-equipped? I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to say no when a friend asks to come to my house to bake (or cook). I’m a regular good samaritan, eh? I’d like to think I’m doing my part for the desserts of the world.

After flipping through Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for the zillionth time, we decided to make S’mores cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes with peanut buttercream frosting.

I’ve made the peanut buttercream frosted cupcakes at least a few times in the past and they’re always well-received. In all honesty, I could eat this frosting all by itself. With a spoon. By the vat. Not that I know exactly what the quantity of a “vat” is. The point is that this stuff is good. Really good. So good that I’m glad I have a wee little bit of self-control. Without it I’d be passed out on the kitchen floor with a spoon and an empty vat.

For these cupcakes, bake your favorite your favorite chocolate cupcake recipe. You can add a little creamy peanut butter to the batter if you’d like to bump up the peanut butter flavor. I usually add about 2 tablespoons to my batter.

Peanut Buttercream Frosting

Recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Makes enough frosting to generously frost 12 regular size cupcakes

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup margarine, softened
• 2 tablespoons shortening
• 1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 1 1/2 teaspooons vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups confectioner’s sugar, sifted
• 1 to 2 tablespoons soy milk

Directions

1. With electric handheld mixer, cream together margarine and shortening at medium speed till smooth.
2. Add peanut butter, molasses, and vanilla; beat until very smooth, about 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Beat in sugar; mixture will be very stiff.
4. Dribble in soy milk a little at a time, beating continuously till frosting is pale tan and very fluffy.
5. If frosting is too thick or too thin, adjust the consistency by adding small amounts of soy milk or confectioner’s sugar if necessary.

For the record, I’ve never had to do step 5. This recipe has been perfect (and possibly divine) every single time I’ve made it.

Tweet This Post 

I’ve blended summer blueberries with winter Meyer lemons to make these lemon cupcakes with blueberry buttercream frosting.

I missed Meyer lemon season last winter and was determined not to miss it this year. It seems that nearly everyone in the blogging world raves about them, so I figured I should give them a go. I noticed that they were in season when I saw them at Dean & Deluca on a recent visit to Georgetown but I didn’t feel like dragging a bunch of lemons around all day. Fortunately my local Trader Joe’s had them in stock when I got home.

These cupcakes are the first and only thing I’ve made with them so far so the jury is still out on whether I like/love them or not. Lots of people seem to love them because they’re not as tart as regular lemons. I’ve no issues with the tartness of regular lemons so that’s not going to make me love the Meyer lemons. I was advised to try them with agave nectar in a batch of margaritas. That might be when I decide whether I love them or not.

For these cupcakes, you can skip the Meyers altogether and use regular lemons. I would have done so if the Meyer lemons weren’t already in the house. For the blueberry buttercream frosting, I added blueberry jam to a batch of regular buttercream frosting. I made the jam last summer with blueberries I picked. You could use store bought blueberry jam.

If you already have a favorite golden cupcake recipe, use it. Just add lemon juice and lemon zest.

Meyer Lemon Cupcakes

Very slightly adapted from the “Golden Vanilla Cupcakes” recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Makes 12 regular or 24 mini cupcakes

Ingredients

• 1 cup soy milk
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup margarine, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• juice of 2 Meyer lemons (or 2 medium regular lemons)
• 1 tablespoon Meyer lemon zest (or regular lemon zest)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pan with cupcake liners.
2. Whisk the soy milk and apple cider vinegar in a measuring cup and set aside a few minutes to curdle.
3. Whisk the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.
4. In a separate large bowl, cream margarine and sugar for about 2 minutes at medium speed with a handheld mixer. Beat in the vanilla, lemon juice & lemon zest.
5. Alternate beating in the soy milk mixture and dry ingredients. Stop to scrape the side of the bowl a few times.
6. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full and bake for 20-22 minutes until done. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting.

Blueberry Buttercream Frosting

Adapted (and no longer vegan) from the “Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting” recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 3 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup milk
• 3/4 cup blueberry jam

Directions

1. Beat shortening and margarine together until well combined and fluffy.
2. Add the sugar and beat for 3 more minutes.
3. Add the vanilla and milk, beat for another 5-7 minutes until fluffy.
4. Add blueberry jam and beat until well combined.
5. Pipe or spoon onto cupcakes.

Tweet This Post 

For more Wordless Wednesday posts and information, go here.

Tweet This Post 

We’ve officially moved into the new house! I’ve even begun to cook and bake again. These red velvet cupcakes are among the handful of items I’ve made in the last few days.

These cupcakes are bland and don’t really taste like anything. Oh well…I’ll try them again sometime. More importantly, they were baked in an oven that works properly. That makes me immensely happy. Almost as happy as not having to go to the laundromat anymore.

I’ll get back to posting pictures and blogging soon. We didn’t get internet until two days ago and I’m still catching up on the all the things I’d missed.

The house is nearly unpacked…I only have a couple of boxes left. The last big thing to do is to hang all of our art on the walls. That might have to wait a week or so. Other than that, the house looks pretty good already…and we only moved on Saturday!

That’s all for now…just wanted to check in and let everyone know that I’m alive and doing very well!

Tweet This Post 

I’ve intended to post for the last several days. Clearly I got sidetracked somewhere along the line…

Pictured above are some wheat dinner rolls I made last week. They’re an adaptation of Baking Illustrated‘s Parker House Rolls recipe. I’ll get the recipe for these on this site soon. I think I’m going to spend a bit of time tonight catching up on recipe stuff both in the database program and on this site.

Anyway, these turned out fantastic. While making these, I did something I’ve never done before but will be doing again. I marked up my cookbook with pencil. I made a couple of changes to the ingredients and realized that writing in my cookbook was the easiest way to write down my alterations. I felt a little guilty doing it.

Now to catch up on some of my other cooking…

This is one of the cherry almond tarts I made last week. I soaked the cherries in amaretto and baked them in an almond shortbread crust with more of the crust crumbled on top.

Campton Place Coffee Cake from Desserts by the Yard…the first coffee cake I’ve ever made that I was genuinely happy with in the end. I’ll post this recipe soon as well. I keep saying that, huh?

These are vegan carrot cupcakes with orange buttercream frosting. These are also my first for-profit baked goods. A coworker asked me if I could bake a batch of cupcakes for his newly-vegan ex-girlfriend. So I did…and I made myself a batch as well. I wanted to make caramel buttercream frosting but vegan caramel sauce isn’t so easy to make…I tried and failed and opted for the orange buttercream.

This is my S’mores Tart. I came up with this one on my own after toasting marshmallow around the campfire last month. It has a very buttery graham cracker crust, a chocolate chess pie filling and is topped with a marshmallow fluff meringue that I hand torched. Rich and decadent. The boyfriend got a little testy because I gave 3 pieces of it away…recipe forthcoming.

Other than the cooking, life is pretty boring. Work is good. We’re busy…which means I make money. That’s always good.

The boyfriend and I went to Charlottesville to visit friends (the boyfriend’s friends from high school and one of their boyfriends) last weekend. We spent the afternoon at a wine festival in the country outside of Charlottesville. None of us consumed too much wine so there aren’t any fun stories to tell…

…but here are some of us laughing at a very drunk woman after she decided to ride on the children’s wagon thing that circled the festival.

So that I’m not leaving anyone out of my blog entry, here’s a picture of Krista and I…Krista took all the other pictures at the festival so this is the only one she’s actually in…

At the festival, I learned that I kind of like some Virginia chardonnays…as long as they’re void of any oaky taste. This surprised me as I really don’t like chardonnays in general. They’re my least favorite white by a long shot. My hatred for Virginia red wine was reiterated by numerous tastings of yucky cabernet francs. I bought no wine but I did get some fantastic bacon and garlic cheese at the festival…that I forgot was in the fridge until just this second. I chose the bacon and garlic flavor over the other excellent choices because it was the one the boyfriend was least likely to devour in a day or two.

The rest of the trip to Charlottesville was good…I got to play on a Wii for the first time. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would and was pretty decent at it right away. This kind of shocked me. If I were to buy a gaming system (which I wouldn’t), I’d want a Wii. We also walked around UVA for a while…which I’d never really done before…and after the walk, I don’t really understand why people want to live in the rooms on the Lawn. They’re kind of dumpy…but I guess people live there for the honor of doing so…not for the walk to the bathrooms. Other than that, we did a fair amount of playing games and sitting in bars…fun and lazy!

Let’s see…other things to talk about?

The boyfriend’s house is still in slow progress. They didn’t do much in the last couple of weeks but apparently started the framing yesterday.

I’m pretty excited about my Flickr stats…I’ve had 50,000 individual views to my photos. I get excited about the little things, huh?

Tweet This Post 

Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Buttercream Frosting

First, the food. These are chocolate cupcakes with peanut buttercream frosting. The recipe is from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I used their basic chocolate cupcake recipe and added a little peanut butter, a little espresso powder and some Reese’s peanut butter chips to the batter. All worked well. I also used half normal cocoa powder and half Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder…the Special Dark stuff is why the cupcakes are soooooo dark.

The frosting is pretty much a normal buttercream…with a little less sugar and shortening and a good amount of peanut butter. The recipe also called for molasses to punch up the peanut butter flavor. I used it and my god is this good frosting.

I wanted to make some maple walnut bar cookies today but I kind of ran out of time as we’ve got plans this evening. I’ll make them soon…and I may not have had enough maple syrup anyway.

The food part is over. Now on to other subjects…

The boyfriend’s house is now in progress. Slow progress but progress all the same. They’re currently working on the foundation.

I took Easter off for the what I believe is the first time in 9 years…we drove across the state and spent the day with the boyfriend’s family. I had fun and only had to meet two new people. We spent the afternoon eating and playing games. Apples to Apples is a fantastic game that utilizes my sense of humor pretty well.. I’m going to have to get it for myself soon.

I still haven’t taken any pictures of myself wearing my Chevron Scarf. I’ve knit about a quarter of a cardigan for myself in the last couple weeks. I’ll post a picture the progress once it’s done enough to see what it is. Right now, it’s just a large knitted blob.

That’s about all from here…nothing too exciting…I’ve just been busy. We’re thinking about going camping this weekend so maybe I’ll have some wacky tales to tell about that soon. With luck, none of these tales will involve a collapsed tent.

Oh, one more thing. I don’t like the singer Jason Mraz. I kind of think he’s a twerp. But I like his new song, “I’m Yours”. I probably only like it because it’s a goofy love song that sounds a little bit like it could be a Jack Johnson song. It upsets me to like a Jason Mraz song…but I do. That’s my guilty admission of the day.

Tweet This Post