Coconut Cupcake Crazy!

Last weekend saw the last Bank Holiday Weekend of the year till Christmastime. Allow that to sink in, won’t you? That’s it, basically. Unless you have some allocated holiday time still unused, all you traditionally employed people are looking at about 14 weeks of non-stop work, save the occasional cheeky duvet day most of us score sometime mid-October. Depressing, innit?

Well never fear, for I have just the ticket to get you out of the dumps! On Saturday, jealous of all the baking activity going on in my Twitter feed, I put out a call for a recipe for coconut cupcakes. In my recent house move, I have become one of those people who browses homeware stores, looking for crap to buy. Last week, I bought silicone cupcake moulds, and my destiny was clear. Thankfully, my friend A responded to my recipe-call in typical awesome fashion. Below is her amazing(ly hilarious) recipe for amazing coconut cupcakes, copied out pretty much verbatim from her email to me. I’ve not put in an ingredients list, but simply bolded up what you need and quantities. I’ve never baked this well in my life. Seriously, I promise you’ll lick the screen when you see the photos.

Coconut Cupcakes

The cake recipe I used here is a trusty old standby from the Vermont-based King Arthur Flour Company cookbook. (King Arthur is a gorgeous, friendly, warm-hearted company that’s been in business since 1790, and their cookbook is about as legendary a piece of classic Americana as you can ever find). What follows is a cheery amalgamation of a couple of different systems, which I hope will make things easy for you.

Extra Information
An American cup holds 250ml. A British cup is a little bit bigger, and holds 285ml. The difference isn’t critical, but it’s good to be aware of, I always think. On the difference between the weights of different substances: the cup, which Americans use to measure their baking ingredients, is a measure of volume. Brits, being much more sensible, weigh their ingredients, which gives a much more accurate amount. Sugar is bulkier and takes up more room in the cup than finely-milled flour does, hence the difference in weight. Generally speaking, I always use weight measurements when I can. Cup measurements can sometimes lead to unpredictable results.

The cake:

• Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line your 12-cup pan with cupcake liners.
• Cream 125g of room-temperature butter with a mixer for at least two minutes, or until very soft and pale and fluffy. Add 1 American cup (or 200g) of white sugar, and beat together for another two minutes, or until you get bored. I usually get bored after a minute and start thinking about Jake Gyllenhaal’s butt, but it’s better if you do the full two to to get maximum air and lightness into the mix. Add two large eggs, one at a time, and mix again. It will all look like whale sputum at this point, but I swear it’ll taste awesome.
• In a separate bowl, measure out 2 American cups (230g) of self-raising flour. Add 1 teaspoon of salt. Sift them together, or if you’re lazy like me, just give it a whisk to give it a suitable airiness.
• In another bowl, measure out 1 American cup of milk, and add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.
• Now, alternately mix the dry and wet ingredients into the butter-sugar-egg. Maybe in thirds? The point is, don’t overmix once you introduce the flour, or else the gluten will start to develop, and you’ll have tough, angry cupcakes. Totally not cool. Then add 1/2 a cup of desiccated coconut (or a similar amount that looks good to you), and stir through.
• Spoon the batter into your cupcake pan, and bake for 20-30 minutes. Mine took 25, but definitely check after 20 to see if a skewer poked through the centre of one comes out clean. Some ovens are assholes and like to surprise you – I know mine does. Pull them out, and let them cool. Pat them fondly, just to let them know that you love their little golden selves.

These are they:

Look at these cupcakes. LOOK AT THEM.

The icing:

• First toast your coconut. Get out a frying pan, and set it over a medium heat on the stove. Add about 2/3 of a cup of desiccated coconut, and watch it. Seriously. This stuff will go from innocent snowy whiteness to carbon in the time it takes to scratch your bum. Stir. When it’s a pale gold in colour, sprinkle over 1 tablespoon of white sugar, and keep stirring until the sugar has coated the coconut and it’s just begun to caramelise. It should all be a nice toasty brown. Take it off the heat, and pour onto a plate to cool.
• Now take 200g of room-temperature butter, and like before, beat it until it’s soft and fluffy, and then beat it some more. Gradually add in about 3 cups of sieved icing sugar, or possibly more, until you’ve got a lovely softly-stiff primrose-yellow mix. Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and mix again.

This is what the icing bowl looked like after:

I licked this clean afterwards. I had to.

• Ice your beautiful little babies, and then sprinkle on the caramel coconut on top. Take a brief pause to think about how awesome you are. Photograph the moment. Eat.

The finished product:

*Drools*

What are you waiting for? Get baking! They taste even better on the second day. And the third. And the fourth, even.