Coconut Cupcakes

Working my way backwards here. These are the coconut cupcakes I made last week. After the earthquake fiasco, I thought "wow - I don't want to die while working, in front of my laptop." I decided to spend more time on what I love to do - cooking & baking & making people fat. Ok fine - I was bored after coming home early due to the earthquake.

This is Ina Garten's recipe, which I've used before (probably 5 yrs ago). Quite frankly, this is something I would make when I'm not feeling exactly ambitious. If I were feeling ambitious, I would make this.

The test subjects: the usual work people. They loved it. No complaints. (I try to fish for comments in order to improve my baking, but I wasn't sure if they are being polite or refraining from being honest in fear of losing occassional free grubs.)

What did not work: The instruction says to fill the batter to the top. This results in a muffin top that gets stuck to the pan and makes it very difficult to get the delicate cakes (not muffins) out of the pan in one piece. It was frustrating. I think Ina Garten was going for the scrumptious factor with oversized cupcakes and oversized icing, but still. I'm not that patient to pry the delicate little things out of the muffin pans one by one.

What worked: The taste factor. It hurts me to reveal the amount of butter and sugar used in these cakes. But hey, it made the cupcakes DELICIOUS and people loved them.

*Also - I am not sure these cupcakes can qualify as "coconut" cupcakes. Just because there were a few sprinkles of coconut flakes in the batter and on top of the icing, doesn't make them coconut cupcakes. Hence, I will attempt Bobby Flay's next time.