lime-in-da-coconut cupcakes

do you ever find yourself motivated to do something, just because you have a song stuck in your head? well. yesterday, i should have just listened to the joy of cooking about how to make that sweet, subtle, coconut milk pudding. but i did not. because i started thinking to myself...you put the lime in da coconut and shake it all up, you put the lime in da coconut...etc. but that shit tasted gross. so today, i made it into delicious cupcakes. take that, failure! when life gives me lemons, i'll fucking bake some shit! i'm not even scared.

furthermore, this entry serves to be a reminder of my firmly-held belief that the reason we all think that baking is a careful science is that type-a bakers and bakresses are just trying to make us feel badly about ourselves. i jacked up that pudding recipe. and these cupcakes showed warning signs of disaster several times. but they turned out light, fluffy, delectably crispy around the top edges and addictive like a teen aged girl reading twilight, you feel me?

ok, cream together:

1 stick u/s butter

1/4 c light brown sugar

1/2 c granulated sugar

add:
1 whole egg, plus 1 egg yolk

then, if you're a jackass like me, you can add:
1/2 c. lime-in-da-coconut pudding (the recipe, as i altered it to its detriment, went a little like 1 can coconut milk, juice of 1/2 lime, scant 2T sugar, scant 2T cornstarch, scant 1/8 t salt) you are lucky i am not posting the picture i took of that ugly dessert. ew. what you can do, instead, is use 1/3 cup coconut milk and the juice of 1/2 lime, plus one more tablespoon of sugar. that's really a much better idea. the joy of cooking is the bible to little ladies like me. i don't know why i was all worshipping a golden calf of adding lime juice! what's that? no one except me thinks golden calf jokes are funny? oh, ok.

at this point, my batter started to have that really unfortunate, i'm-trying-to-separate-from-myself look..you know the one...all slimy...i blame the pudding. (gentle reminder that no one should be intimidated by fear of baking disaster!) in any case, i shut that shit down by adding...

the dry ingredients:
1- 1/4 c. a.p. flour
2- 1/2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
zest of 1/2 lime

wow, that baby goes fast!

except, they didn't taste really delicious yet. i kept thinking of adding vanilla or almond extract, but i didn't want to overpower the coconut milk. i did find the oldest known bottle of imitation coconut extract in the cabinet...

can you believe that shit? ...but it was actually empty. i just left it there, because that shit is hilarious! it was actually price marked 75 cents...ummm...ok, did you guys realize that the cent symbol is not even on the keyboard anymore? man, i am so old.

anyway, right around this time, i had my first brilliant epiphany, and added:

3 T. shredded sweetened coconut flakes. btw, i had a long talk with my mother this evening about how she needs to replace that wallpaper.
(and another 1/4 t. baking powder, but i'm not convinced that was necessary. yeah, ignore that)

this made the batter delicious enough for my favorite method of kitchen-aid beater cleanup:



the other epiphany was about the glaze on top. can you guess what it might involve?

bake until they're damn well good and ready. (this is why i think the other 1/4 t. baking soda was superfluous. they got all excited and exceeded their cups!) my parents have this little device called a cake tester. i get my obsession with kitchen gadgets naturally. the thing is, a toothpick actually works better than this device. but who am i to judge?

while the cakes were not yet cool enough to consume (i really just can't learn), i made my glaze.

now, i find the taste of confectioner's sugar overpowering and ooky, so i am always trying to alter it. this time, i did:

1/2 c. confectioner's sugar

1t. orange blossom honey

3 t. spiced rum

blend and drizzle, my frizzle.

except that the taste still grossed me out, so i added 2- 1/2 more teaspoons rum, poured over cupcakes and poked holes with the cake tester(finally! a good use for it!), so the booze would get all up in there. the cakes were pretty friggin' alright then. but when they cooled, they were freaking delicious.

you should know that this idea was inspired by a coconut cake recipe in the new york times cookbook, which substitutes coconut milk for milk. you should also know that this cookbook is ever present in my childhood memories. for example, this is the page with the pancake recipe. can you see the evidence of all 3 kids there? and how much we loved dying breakfast green on st. patrick's day?