October 22, 2011.  I had just woken up.  I didn’t check the time on my alarm clock.  I didn’t think about the cupcakes I was planning on making that day.  The only thought that entered my mind was that I was freezing.  I looked down at the foot of my bed and realized that during my nightly routine of tossing and turning, I had kicked all of my blankets off of my bed.  It’s not very often that I wish I lived in a tropical climate but, that morning, I was wishing that I had woken up on a warm beach somewhere in Maui instead of my cold room in the middle of Missouri.

Ironically, I had decided on making coconut cupcakes from Williams-Sonoma’s cookbook for my first blog about a week ago.  They ended up being the answer to my tropical blues.

These cupcakes are a coconut lover’s dream.  I mean, this recipe is literally filled with it!  There’s coconut in and on top of the cupcakes.  That means the cupcake would have been a very white vanilla cupcake (with shredded coconut of course), vanilla frosting, and shredded coconut topping.  I decided to personalize the cupcake just a bit and created  a sweet solution to the color issue.

I took the two cups of coconut used for the topping and stuck it into the oven at 400° F for five minutes, flipped the shreds with a spatula, and stuck it into the oven for another five.  They turned out crispy and golden brown, adding a nice textural element to the cupcake as well as a little color.

I didn’t officially get to try one of my cupcakes until the next morning (today) and I’m still debating on if I like it or not.  I think the second time I attack this recipe I might mix the coconut topping with mini chocolate chips and toasted almond slivers, a slight spin-off of an Almond Joy® (the best candy bar ever invented).

One recipe down, eight more to go.  See you next weekend.