This isn’t a cupcake recipe. The cupcakes themselves are my Dark Chocolate Cupcakes, a recipe I use a lot since they are pretty predictable.
They weren’t exactly predictable this time because I did a little bit of experimenting. I replaced some of the rice flour with almond flour, my new thing-I-want-to-try-to-see-how-it-works. Almond flour is very moist, so I was hoping that it would make up for the dryness of the rice flour.
Well, the almond flour idea seemed to work, but it also changed the batter consistency. So I’m going to have to work on that, and therefore I’m not posting a cupcake recipe here. Yet.
When I do post another cupcake recipe, I suppose it ought to be vanilla cupcakes. A rather depressing thought, but since I already have two chocolate cupcake recipes on here…
:/
Anyway, I covered these CHOCOLATE cupcakes in chocolate coffee frosting (more chocolate), and toasted coconut. I’ve never made toasted coconut before today, but I figured it couldn’t be too hard.
It wasn’t, except for one little detail: It toasts quickly. Really quickly. I popped it in the oven at 350 degrees F with a little bit of sugar and then turned to wipe off the counter. The next thing I knew, I smelled burnt coconut and all my sisters started asking me if something was burning.
Live and learn, right?
So I threw that out and started a new batch, this time watching it VERY carefully. It turned out just fine that time.
One quick note on the coconut: To make as little mess as possible (since I’d already trashed the kitchen and I didn’t feel like having anything extra to clean up), I toasted the coconut on a cookie sheet with some wax paper. That way it’s pretty easy to just throw the coconut in a bowl and toss the wax paper in the garbage can.
- 4 ounces (½ a stick) cream cheese
- 6 tablespoons melted butter (that’s ¾ of a stick)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons coffee
- 2½ cups powdered sugar, more as needed
- 2 tablespoons cream, half and half, or milk.
- In the bowl of your electric mixer (congratulations if it’s a kitchenaid, but try not to hurt my feelings by bragging about it too much) mix together all of the ingredients. Add more sugar until the frosting reaches the desired consistency. As you can see, my frosting is not dry enough for pretty designs. I ran out of powdered sugar and had to make do with slightly sloppy looking frosting.
- Spread the frosting over the cupcakes. The cupcakes must be completely cooled when you do this, otherwise the frosting will melt into the cupcakes and that would be gross.
- Sprinkle with toasted coconut, sprinkles, or nothing if you’re stingy.
This frosting rocks, we’ll I had to improvise a little since I wanted chocolate but no cocoa or anything was called for. I added 2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa and it was simply amazing. Thank you for being so gracious to share your recipes .
Hi Linnaea,
As far as I’m concerned, it would be all the awesomer *yes I know, awesome-r is not a word* if you posted a new chocolate cupcake recipe every week, because I love chocolate, and cupcakes are awesome. But, vanilla sounds ok, too. I am only commenting because I wanted to tell you how fun it is to read your blog. You write in a way that is so sweet, elegant, mature, and also humble. I literally laugh out loud sometimes while reading, and I’m really looking forward to trying your recipes out. The pics are also amazing. Who taught you that? Or did you learn it yourself?
Thank you so much, Chloe! I love to hear that you actually find my posts enjoyable and funny (sometimes I wonder if the people reading my blog just read it because they pity me for my weirdness). Most of the photography stuff I learned from my parents, my older sister, and various food photography articles and videos.
And for the record, “Awesomer” is totally a word. 🙂