Alpha Bakers: Coconut Cupcakes with Milk Chocolate Ganache

"I don't like cupcakes."

That is what my friend told me when I mentioned it was the last thing I baked.

"They are basically cakes, just in cupcake form," is what I told her. I know this because I used to make all kinds of cakes into cupcakes form when I was baking through Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

"Yeah, but I don't like them. They are individually sized, with frosting on top and stuff," is the response I get.

Well no matter. I didn't make these for her. My other friends whom I shared them with thought they were yummy.

On a side note, I don't know what's wrong with things being individually sized with frosting. Isn't it the same with having a 9 inch cake sliced? Each cake slice is individually sized with frosting? The only difference with cupcakes is you have to buy the wrapper - which means spending some money on said wrapper. And if you want to be really precise, as Rose is, and as I try to be, you have to spend some time to weigh each cupcake individually so they are all even (which is my least favorite part of making cupcakes by the way). But it's not a big complain since I find cupcakes very cute so their cuteness way surpass my feeling against weighing each one individually.

End rant.

HCB: German Chocolate Cake

I had mixed feelings about this cake. On one hand, I love the chocolate cake base. I've made it last year for the chocolate ice cream cake and it was delicious. On the other hand, the combination of condensed milk, pecans, and coconut does not sound appetizing. I have nothing against the individual ingredients but together I'm not sure about them.

With all my hesitations, I was pretty glad that the cake is easy to put together. The chocolate cake starts off like most of Rose's oil based chocolate cake, mix cocoa powder with boiling water until smooth. Let cool to room temperature.

HCB Free Choice: Coconut Cheesecake

I made this cake back in February and have been "saving" it for a free choice.

In keeping with tradition, I feel compelled to do complicated math with this recipe, so I made 1/4 recipe, which means I need 30 grams of vanilla wafers. Not feeling like I want to buy a whole pack of wafers to use only 30 grams of it, I opted to use my stash of Rose's sugar cookies that's in the freezer.

For 1/4 recipe I used 4 sugar cookies (about 1 1/2 inch x 3 inch). I wish I had taken a picture of the sugar cookies (it was 4 bunnies), but I forgot.

Mashed the cookies, mixed them with melted butter. I skipped the flaked coconut.

For the filling, it calls for cream of coconut. I had bought a can of it at the liquor store. It took several trips to 4 different stores until I found one. When I got home, I look at the ingredients, and found several items that are questionable. Generally if I can't pronounce the ingredients I don't buy the product. And generally I checked it at the store. But I was so excited to have found cream of coconut that I skipped this habit. So instead of using the cream of coconut (it's still in the pantry today next to a bottle of dark rum), I used leftover coconut milk from the Heavenly Coconut Seduction Cake that I made the week before. (In case you are all wondering, the leftover coconut milk still smells good and tasted good after a week.)
 

From making the Heavenly Coconut Seduction Cake the week before, I knew that I couldn't just substituted the cream of coconut with coconut milk. Cream of coconut contains sugar, whereas coconut milk doesn't, so if using the coconut milk the sugar amount needs to be increased. Not sure what to do, I thought to have a look at the other cheesecakes in the book. The ginger cheesecake served the same number of people (10-12), and used the same amount of cream cheese. All the other variable are different (amount of eggs and sour cream) but if I look at the other cheesecakes the variable are even more different. I then decided to follow the sugar amount of the ginger cheesecake. But, hang on a minute, the sugar amount is the same. I looked at the other recipes, and the sugar amount is somewhat comparable. Not sure what to do, I decided to add 10 grams of sugar.

Aside from the drama of coconut milk and confusion of sugar amount, the cheesecake is easy to put together.

I used my mini heart silicone mold (Wilton) and I think 1/4 recipe yield 6 cheesecake. I don't remember for sure as I forgot to take notes (I know... bad! bad!)

Tasting impressions:
Though I am not a big fan of cheesecake or coconut dessert, after 2 weeks of eating coconut dessert in a row, it is growing on me! This cheesecake is really good. It is not too sweet, just enough for my taste (so I'm glad I didn't add too much sugar). The texture is great, just like a cheesecake is supposed to be. Hubby loves it. He loves coconut dessert, so he's in dessert heaven for a couple of days.

Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake - two ways

I had made this cake for hubby's birthday a couple of years ago. I made dinner and had several friends over. I remembered the cake was easy to make but the buttercream was time consuming. The addition of flaked coconuts into the buttercream made it difficult to frost the cake. I did not anticipate this when I planned my time throughout the day. So, when the guests arrived, the cake was partially frosted. Thankfully, one of my friend bakes and so she finished frosting the cake.

It was so hectic that evening (for me at least - everyone else were busy eating) that I forgot to take a picture of the cake until it's almost gone! But as you can see from the photo below that the cake was a success. It's soft and crumbly, in a good way. And considering this cake feeds 16-20 and we only had 10 people, that speaks for itself.

Hubby loved the cake so much that once everyone got their piece, he covered the piece that's in the photo and put it in the fridge. I looked at him confused, until he whispered to me "so no one eats it and I can have it for tomorrow."

At this point, you might be asking yourself what are the cupcakes in the photo at the beginning of this post.

I was planning on skipping this week's cake and bake ahead - making something for the free choice next week.

That was the plan, until I saw Hector's post about coconut curd. I was intrigued and Hector was nice enough to give the link to the recipe. If you follow the comments' conversation in his post you will see that I thought of making this cupcakes with coconut curd whipped cream. And that's exactly what I did.

First I made the coconut curd. Hector's recipe yield 400 grams. I made half the recipe. Making coconut curd is like making any other curd, in that it takes forever and you have to stand there and stir and stir. About 10 minutes in, I got impatient, so I grabbed a stool to sit down and started reading Zach's La Bomba recipe just to kill time. It helps.

Here's the picture of the finished curd. So yellow. Looks just like lemon curd isn't it?

Next, I made the cupcakes. 1/3 recipe this time. It turned out it yield 504 grams in total, enough to fill 12 cupcakes, 42 grams each. I know this because I weigh each cupcake, a tidious process that I find annoying but I do it anyway because I like the result. Each cupcake looks the same.

Here are the cupcakes. I filled the middle with a little dollup of coconut curd. There are only 10 cupcakes in the photo, the other two didn't make it to the photo because the photographer was hungry (YUM!).

 

I had planned to make fluffy whipped cream that I will pipe decoratively and beautifully on top of the cupcake. That's not how it turned out. The whipped cream wouldn't reach any pipeable-stiffness, even with numerous chilling attempt. I think adding the coconut curd into the whipped cream made it runnier. I tried adding a couple of tablespoon of powdered sugar. It didn't help. Next time I will try using more the cornstarch or maybe use gelatin.

I was pretty happy with the result though. It looks kinda rustic and the toasted coconut made it looked better.

Tasting impressions:
YUM! So good! The curd is good by itself but it's better added into the whipped cream. The cupcake is very soft and crumbly. Hubby loves it and said it's very coconut-y. I'm not a big fan of coconut dessert myself, but this one is really good.

HCB Free Choice: Heavenly Coconut Seduction Cake

For HCB Free Choice this week I made the Coconut Seduction Cake. I was curious and excited about making this cake. Curious because I am not a big fan of coconut dessert (the real fruit I like) but this cake looks so pretty in the book. Excited because hubby LOVES coconut dessert, so I'm excited about making him happy (I know.. cheesy cheesy..).

It's not easy to take pictures of a white cake. I started with a completely white background and though it looks bright, the whole thing looks blah. So I switched to this colorful flowery cloth, which, I'm not sure if it's too busy. So I hope you guys like the pictures.

This cake is real easy to put together. I decided to go with Rose's alternative suggestion and use coconut milk instead of cream of coconut. Mostly because reading up on the cream of coconut ingredients, they all sound so hm.. scary. All those chemicals that I don't know about. Whereas coconut milk has about 1 ingredients. Clear as day!

This cake is similar to regular butter cake, with coconut milk substituting milk in this cake. Process the coconut and sugar in the food processor until fine. Then mix the egg whites with a bit of coconut milk, coconut extract, and vanilla extract. Mix all the dry ingredients in the mixer. Add in the rest of the coconut milk and butter. Then add in the egg mixture in 2 additions.

To make matter more interesting, I made 70% of the cake. I wanted to have enough batter for my 6 inch heart pan and have a few mini cakelets. I could have made just half the recipe and take some batter to fill the cakelets but then my cake would be short. So 70% it is - and it yield 1 6 inch cake and 4 mini cakelets.

While the cake is cooling, I placed the mixer and mixer bowl in the fridge. After the cake cooled, I made the cornstarch stabilized whipped cream. Paying more attention this time so it would not curdled. Though I guess if it did, it would not have mattered as the cream will be covered with shredded coconut anyway.

One complaint I have about this recipe is that it used 2 different shredded coconut. The one for the cake batter is unsweetened and the one for topping is sweetened. When I read this I rolled my eyes! I refused to buy 2 different coconut so I bought the unsweetened one instead.

Tasting impression:
YUM! I actually liked this cake. The coconut flavor is not too strong (that's why I like it :)). And I love whipped cream. Hubby love it as well.