Thursday, March 26, 2020

Coconut Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache

It's quarantine time, y'all, which means I want to bake, but there's only 3 of us in this house, and I'm not trying to gain 50 pounds, AND I have limited ingredients. It feels like an episode of chopped. Anyway, I wanted to make cupcakes, but I didn't have buttermilk which I always use in my cupcakes (if you've seen any of my other posts, you know), but I did have some coconut milk. It turns out I didn't even have enough coconut milk, so I also used sour cream. All of this to say, I'm gonna give you my recipe, but I am also gonna give you some alternatives because maybe you're like me, stuck at home, and have other ingredients that I don't have and don't have ones that I do!
Also, I tried to just make a dozen cupcakes, so I halved my usual ratios. I still ended up with about 15 cupcakes. If you need more, feel free to double the ingredients.

For the Cake:
1/4 c vegetable oil
1/4 c unsalted butter (1/2 stick), room temp
1 c granulated sugar
2 eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c all-purpose flour
3/4 c cake flour
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4  tsp baking soda
3/4 c coconut milk *I only ended up having 1/2 c left from making muffins earlier in the week, so I did 1/2 c coconut milk and 1/4 c sour cream; you could also just do 3/4 c buttermilk; another good option would be 1/2 c whole milk and 1/4 c sour cream*
**coconut extract - I did not have this. Again, hello shelter in place. IF you do have it, totally use some. Use it sparingly- it is very strong. The cake doesn't really taste like coconut just with the coconut milk - my husband who hates coconut can attest to that. If you don't have extract, that's okay; we are going to coat the buttercream in toasted coconut, so it'll be coconut-y, but if you do have it, use it.

1.Preheat oven to 350F and prepare cupcake pans with liners. Again, it's a little more than a dozen. You could make the remaining  batter into cupcakes or fill a small cake pan. Follow your heart. I did more cupcakes.
2. In a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream together oil, butter, and sugar. Add in the yolks of the two eggs- keep the whites separate. Add in vanilla extract.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together egg whites until at stiff peaks. Set aside.
4. In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients- flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
5. Pour 1/3 of the dry ingredients into the sugar mixture and mix to combine.
6. Pour 1/2 of the coconut milk (or whatever milk you had) into sugar mixture and combine.
7. Pour another 1/3 of dry.
8. Pour second 1/2 of coconut milk and sour cream (if you used it).
9. Pour in the last 1/3 of the dry ingredients.
10. Slowly fold in the egg whites that were whipped up earlier. *This ensures that the batter will be light and fluffy.
11. Distribute into pans and bake for 18 - 22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
12. Allow to cool completely before filling with ganache.

For the Ganache:
1/2 c heavy whipping cream
6 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips *or any chocolate you like
2 tbsp unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
Splash of vanilla extract

1. Place the heavy cream in a small pan on the stove and heat until just at a simmer. You don't want this to boil.
2. While the cream is heating, put your chocolate and butter chopped into small cubes into a heat- safe bowl.
3. Once the cream has heated, pour over the chocolate and butter and cover bowl with plastic wrap for about 5 minutes. *This just ensures that your chocolate will melt and be easier to incorporate.
4. Stir the ingredients together. At first it will look like they aren't coming together. They will. Once it's smooth, I add some salt and vanilla to taste, and make sure to fully incorporate it.
5. Allow to cool a bit because it will look like this at first:
But it will start to thicken a bit more. You want it to be able to be piped into the cupcakes, but not too runny. If you let it harden too much, then you'll be a little sad when trying to get it into the cupcakes. 

For the Frosting (and topping):
1 c unsalted butter (2 sticks), room temp
3 c powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract *or again, if you have coconut extract, use here, but NOT a tsp; probably much less
Pinch of salt
3/4 c coconut flakes *I'm not gonna lie- I didn't measure this; I just put some in the pan. It feels like it was about this much, and it was plenty. You can use sweetened or unsweetened- I used sweetened because that's what I had.

1. In a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and slowly add powdered sugar until fully incorporated.
2. Add in vanilla and salt. Beat until fluffy.
3. If it feels too loose, add more powdered sugar. If it feels too stiff, add a splash of milk.
4. Put coconut flakes in a small, dry pan on low-medium heat. Stir frequently until they start to lightly toast. Pay attention here! This shit will burn real fast. Set aside in a bowl for assembly.

Assembly:
1. With a pairing knife, cut a hole in the center of the cooled cupcakes, being careful not to go all the way to the bottom. I cut off the top of the cone that I cut out so that I could put the little "hat" back on top of the ganache. This was just to help it from coming out when you pipe buttercream on top.
2. Put ganache into a piping bag (or a ziploc bag), and cut a hole to pipe ganache into center of each cupcake. Put the "hat" of cupcake back on top of the ganache.
3. Fill a piping bag (or again a ziploc bag) with buttercream frosting, and cut a large hole in the bag. Pipe in the center of the cupcake. You don't have to go to the very edges.
4. Take each frosted cupcake and push the frosting into the bowl of coconut flakes, moving the cupcake around to get it completely covered. I pushed straight down on the buttercream at first so that the cream would come to the edge of the cupcake and then went around the edges of the buttercream as well for full coverage.
5. Try to make people eat your cupcakes so that you don't eat all of them while sitting on your ass in quarantine.


No comments:

Post a Comment