Espresso Cupcakes
makes 1 dozen (actually, it *should* make one dozen, I just over fill my muffin tin and get, like, 10)
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/3 cup granulate sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp instant espresso powder
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line 12 muffin cups with paper/foil liners.
For starters, cream the butter and sugars until creamy (this can take a while by hand, trust me). Then add the eggs, one at time, beating well after each addition. Finally, mix in the vanilla.
In a separate bowl whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together. In yet another bowl dissolve the espresso powder into the milk. Beat the flour into the butter mixture alternately with the milk in 3 additions (always beginning and ending with the dry ingredients).
Fill the muffin cups and bake, at 350, for 18 - 20 minutes until brown and they pass the toothpick test (insert one in the center of a cupcake and it should come out clean). Let cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then remove to allow to cool completely.
For the frosting: (and in retrospect this makes waaay too much frosting for 12 cupcakes, so I'd half it in the future)
1 can of coconut milk
16 oz canister of vanilla frosting
confectioners sugar
This was just eye-balled. I cooked the coconut milk down for about 25 minutes (it measured a cup in the end). I then mixed about 1/3 cup of it with maybe 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar, to give it more body, then mixed in only about half of the container of frosting. It was pretty wasteful an experiment, actually, but the result was nice and tastey.
Pretty darned delicious. The frosting was good, appropriately coconut-y, but the consistency was a little soft, more like a meringue than a frosting, no that that's a bad thing at all. In the future, when I get a mixer, I'm going to make the best darned coconut frosting ever.
You're a horrible person, Daniel. DAMN YOU AND YOUR DELICIOUS IDEAS!
ReplyDelete*runs off to kitchen*