Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut Frosting

Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut Frosting

Cupcakes:
1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup shredded coconut (I upped this to about a cup with no ill effects)
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter
1 1/3 cup sugar
2 whole eggs + 2 egg whites
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup unsweet coconut milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Whisk together flour, bp, and coconut. The original recipe suggests grinding the coconut in a food processor to make it more fine, but I just put mine in the way it came and had no texture problems.

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Then beat in the eggs, one at a time, and add the vanilla. When these are well-combined, add the flour mixture alternating with the coconut milk until smooth.

Fill your cupcake tins. This recipe is supposed to make 20; I got 24. The cupcakes rise a reasonable amount, so if you fill the liners about 2/3 full, this gives them a nice swelling curve across the top. Bake them for 10 minutes, rotate, and bake another 10 minutes. Let them cool.

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes

Frosting:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
2 1/2 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar (SIFT IT I PROMISE)
1/3 cup coconut milk
1 1/2 tsp coconut extract. The original recipe calls for a vanilla bean/vanilla extract, but I wanted a really rich coconut flavour so I used coconut extract. Obviously you can modify this according to your preferences.

Beat the butter until it's fluffy, then add everything else. Beat it until fluffy. I found that when I beat it the icing developed a kind of weird texture, almost a little grainy? Which I think may have been because the coconut milk was too warm (mine was frozen in a tin so I had to reheat it on the stove).

I decided to be brave and try to use a piping bag, which negated the issue with the texture; however, I am pretty wretched at piping which is why it looks kind of weird and squiggly. I would suggest if you are comfortable with piping, go ahead! If you are like me and always cause a disaster when piping, just go ahead and spread it with the spatula.

Sprinkle with your choice of coloured sugar.

Adapted from epicurious.com