Coconut Cupcakes with Luxurious Coconut Buttercream

Have been quite stressed up over work the past week, thank goodness it's the weekend. Baking therapy would do some good. Decided to try 2 recipes over this weekend, starting with the Coconut Cupcakes with Luxurious Coconut Buttercream learnt during the Summer Treats Workshop: Layer Cakes, Cupcakes & Ice Creams.

The Coconut Cake recipe can be baked to assemble as a layer cake or just simply cupcakes. Cupcakes would be more practical since they could be offered to friends and family for sampling. Moreover, I have yet to procure the necessary equipment for layering a cake. I must attempt a layer cake once of these days, perhaps for upcoming birthdays.

The batter is quite easy to prepare since the recipe given is very comprehensive. To get the aroma of coconut, besides using coconut cream, it's interesting that Nielsen-Massey Pure Almond Extract is used. I guess this aroma is the closest we can get until Nielsen-Massey start to sell Pure Coconut Extract.
The cake turns out tender and not too sweet. Bits of desiccated coconut added to the batter also provide some crunch and texture to the cake. The coconut butter cream is luxurious indeed, complementing the otherwise plain cake.

The buttercream seems a little boring without any toppings. A little drizzle of desiccated coconut completes the look.

Enough baking and washing up for today. I really should buy a new oven soon as my little 18L oven could only manage one tray of cupcake at a time which was so time consuming. Yep, shall go shopping soon. Looking forward to trying another recipe tomorrow.

Update on Sunday 7 Sep: Tried the Lemon Grove Cupcakes with Whipped White Chocolate & Lemon Ganache. All's well until I sent 1 batch of batter into the oven and started cleaning the kitchen and realised that I forgot the 3rd and final addition of my flour mixture (supposed to mix the flour mixture in 3 additions alternating between the liquid mixture). Left the flour mixture at a corner and totally forgot about it. No wonder I felt something not right with the batter. The cupcake turned out too wet and didn't rise properly. Well, too late and had to waste the batter. Also over beat the ganache, one moment it was still in runny state, I turned to wash some dishes and it became stiff peak instead of the soft peak consistency. Learnt a valuable lesson, always watch every step closely. Will try next week perhaps as I've run out of some key ingredients and these aren't available at the supermarkets in my vicinity.