Coconut and Pineapple Cupcakes

I wanted to make some cupcakes but I wanted them to be a little different. I first had the idea of making lemon meringue but then I thought maybe more variety would be better so I had a look through my books. I settled on coconut and pineapple cupcakes found in the Hummingbird bakery cookbook p33. 

The pineapple element of these comes in the form of tinned rings cut into cubes. I got my mum to do that bit, she cut them into small chunks and then placed a small amount in each of the cases. We used paper cases, that were a kind present, which are slightly smaller than cupcake cases but we thought looked pretty and made them more bitesize. 

To make the batter I mixed together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in the mixer until everything is combined. 

I mixed in coconut milk and vanilla extract until the mixture was light and fluffy. This was then spooned into each of the cases so they were 2/3 full. These were then baked in the oven until the cupcakes were golden and sprang back when touched. These were left to cool. 

Cakes cooling.

Once cool we made the coconut frosting. To do this I combined butter (real butter for once!) and icing sugar together, this was supposed to be until they had started to combine but I found that the mixture was too dry and this wasn't happening. The next step is to add coconut milk, so I added this to the mixture despite it not being combined. This instantly brought the mixture together making it icing, I had to add more than the recipe stated in order to make the butter icing soft enough to pipe. 

All iced.

Frosting sprinkled with coconut

I piped the icing onto the cooled cakes, as I was pipping and not spooning I ran out of frosting and found I needed to make another batch, so I used double the amount the recipe stated. Mum then scatter desiccated coconut on the top of these cakes to finish them off. 

I borrowed mum's cupcake stand to serve these on: 

Cupcakes ready to be eaten. 

Verdict: I gave these cupcakes 6/10, I thought that the flavours were too subtle and I couldn't really taste coconut. I got the texture from the desiccated coconut but no flavour. I also found the pineapple a little weak despite having quite a lot in each case. Gary didn't taste these, as he doesn't like coconut. However, my young niece loved these and eat several through the course of the afternoon yesterday telling me how good they were.