Inspiration for these came from the 2010 Donna Hay Magazine kid’s issue.  Yes, I’ve had these cupcakes in my head for over one year!  Finally the opportunity came to make them for myself.

I did not use Donna Hay’s cake and frosting recipes.  I will never use a Donna Hay recipe for cakes or frostings as in the past I have repeatedly had issues and failures with them.  The recipes I used for my cupcakes were ones that I love and know will turn out properly and delicious.  The chocolate cupcakes are vegan, and the vanilla buttercream, while not vegan, is my favorite vanilla frosting recipe.  The recipes are below, although feel free to use your own favorite flavor combination.

A quick note about the vegan chocolate cupcakes: these cupcakes are very soft and moist and delicious. They are my favorite cupcake to bake. But I repeat, they are very soft and do fall apart easily. They would not be suitable for a heavy layer of frosting or lots of decorations.

Decorating these is extremely simple.  Use Smarties or M&M’s to place around the outside edges of the cupcakes (I used Smarties, but M&M’s would be smaller and probably would look slightly better).  The “alien” inside is a Starburst Sucks lollipop, in apple flavor.  I had to trim the plastic lollipop stick to fit down into the cupcake.  Finally, top the “alien” off with a tiny shot glass-sized clear plastic cup.  Be sure to also use foil cupcake liners for the full UFO effect!

We placed two candles on our favorite UFO and our little guy blew them out!  Happy Birthday!

These UFO cupcakes would be a hit at any children’s party and being so easy to decorate, anyone at all could do it!  If you make them for yourself or someone else, please share a photo with me – I’d love to see them!

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I knew these cupcakes would specifically be for children, so I wanted to make something very cute and child-friendly.  Rainbow cupcakes would be perfect!  I don’t mean those cakes that are packed full of food coloring to create some psychedelic rainbow-like patterns, as I’m not a huge fan of those.  No, what I mean is….

A real rainbow cupcake!   This is a classic chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream combo.  I used my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe, which happens to be vegan, and is chocolaty, moist and fluffy.  The vanilla buttercream was, of course, tinted with a touch of food coloring (except for the clouds).  The rainbow part is a sour fruit rainbow strap.

The process to create this cute look is super easy, you don’t even need to have any knowledge of cake decorating.  In fact, you don’t even need to bake cupcakes from scratch – use a boxed mix if you prefer.  While you’re at it, you can even use a tub of pre-made frosting.  The only things you’ll need extra are blue food coloring, a small piping bag or Ziploc bag, and rainbow fruit staps.

The recipes for the chocolate cupcakes and vanilla buttercream can be found by clicking on the respective links, which will take you to previous posts from my blog – the recipes will make 12 cupcakes.  For instructions on putting together the rainbow cupcakes, keep reading!

Now really, the process of putting these cupcakes together is pretty self-explanatory.  After making the frosting, take out about 1/3 cup of it; this will form the clouds.  Set it aside.  For the rest of the frosting, drop in a few drops of blue food coloring and mix really well.  The color you end up with entirely depends on you – if you’re after pastel, only add a few drops; if you want a dark blue sky, add more drops.  Take the blue frosting and spread it on top of the cooled cupcakes.

Spoon the remaining white frosting into a pastry bag or Ziploc bag, snip off a small part of the tip or corner (or use a small-ish pastry tip), then pipe out a cloud-like wisp of frosting on either side of the cupcake.

Finally, take the rainbow straps and chop them in half if they are longer straps, bend into a rainbow shape, line up the ends of the rainbow with the clouds and firmly, but gently, push the ends down into the blue frosting.  Easy!

When I came back to school that day to collect my daughter and bring her home, the ladies told me that my cupcakes were the first to sell out!  Hooray!  I hope my little donation will help with the fundraiser.

If you’re after ideas for something to do on a rainy day or a super easy last-minute idea for a child’s birthday party, I totally recommend trying out these rainbow cupcakes.  They are sure to be a huge hit with the kids!

Note that these pictures were not taken with my new camera – I made these before it arrived!

I’m proud to say that they turned out wonderful!  Here is what this cupcake is made up of:

• A Devil’s food chocolate cake made with Droste Dutch-processed cocoa powder and that has had 1/4 cup (plus a touch more) of the flour replaced with finely ground pistachios.
• A filling of homemade Lindt milk chocolate pistachio truffles.
• A chocolate olive oil mousse frosting that is made from 50% Lindt chocolate and 70% Lindt chocolate.
• A topping of chopped pistachios and leftover finely ground pistachios.

These cupcakes are not over-the-top sweet, despite how it looks with all of that chocolate!  The big hit of sweetness comes from the milk chocolate in the truffle filling.  However, most of the sweetness is hidden with that chocolate olive oil mousse (recipe is below).  The mousse frosting is actually a real mousse that you’re supposed to spoon into glasses to serve, but I thought it’d be great as a frosting.  This mousse is delicious and is definitely an adult version of chocolate mousse, so don’t waste it on the kids!

The milk chocolate pistachio truffles are so easy to make (recipe is below), and delicious on their own as well as for the filling in these cupcakes.  I know I could have just filled the cakes with ganache, but I really wanted a truffle.  I at first planned on putting the truffle inside the batter before baking, to see if the truffles would end up like the center of a molten cake.  I changed my mind at the very last minute though, and waited until the baked cupcakes were cooled before stuffing in the truffle.

If you do want a molten cake-like texture with ganache-filled cupcakes though, here’s a hint.  Refrigerate the cupcakes until everything – the cake, filling and frosting – is firm (4-6 hours, or overnight is best).  When you’re ready for a delicious treat, place the cold cupcake straight from the refrigerator into the microwave and turn it on for around 10-14 seconds (if you have really soft frosting, like mousse, go for the shorter time).  When you take out the cupcake and cut into it, the ganache filling should ooze out like it does in a molten cake.  I’ve done that with quite a few of my cupcakes!

The cake recipe is from Martha Stewart.  1/4 cup of the flour was replaced with finely ground pistachios.  This is one of my favorite chocolate cake recipes as it’s very chocolatey, and although it is a firm cake that holds up well for fillings and heavier frostings, it is still very moist and soft.  The recipe is below.

And there you have it, the cupcake I would have entered into my own cupcake challenge – the quadruple chocolate pistachio cupcakes!

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It inspired me.  I had to make my own tiramisu.  Well, I decided to just make a little foray into the world of tiramisu first and make a batch of tiramisu cupcakes, recipe courtesy of who else but Martha Stewart.

The cake recipe is a little more time-consuming that your average cake recipe.  It isn’t tricky, it’s just that there are a few more steps involved.  It is totally worth it in the end though.  Don’t try to substitute an average cake recipe; definitely use this one to experience a more tiramisu-like flavor.

After the cakes come out of the oven, you’ll need to prick them all over their tops with a fork and then drizzle over a coffee-Marsala syrup.  This is easy – just stir together freshly brewed coffee, Marsala and sugar.  As I planned on letting my children sample these, I omitted the Marsala altogether and it still tasted wonderful.

The frosting is super easy as well.  It’s just a mix of heavy cream, mascarpone and confectioners’ sugar.  This tastes lovely and I could have just eaten the whole bowl full of it rather than frost the cupcakes with it!  The frosting is dusted with cocoa powder and decorated with chocolate shavings.

While this isn’t a classic tiramisu (as classic tiramisu is not a cupcake!) this can pretty much hit the spot for any tiramisu craving you may have.  I definitely recommend these and I would definitely make them again.  The recipe can be found on the Martha Stewart website and in Martha’s Cupcakes book.

I took two days to make these – the cakes and ganache filling on Christmas Eve, and the frosting on Christmas morning while the kids were occupied playing with their new toys.

The cakes are definitely as fudgey as Our Best Bites says they are.  In fact, they are very similar in taste to a fudgey brownie.  I was very pleased with the cake recipe and will most likely be using it again in other creations.  Although Our Best Bites says the recipe will make 12 cupcakes, I only got 10.

I did not use the ganache recipe provided from Our Best Bites, but instead I used my own favorite recipe and added peppermint extract to it.  I ended up adding about 3/4-1 teaspoon of peppermint extract, and I noted that the peppermint taste seemed to be stronger after the ganache had cooled.

My only problem with these cupcakes was the frosting.  I had never made a cooked frosting before (unless you count Swiss meringue buttercream), so I wasn’t feeling overly confident as I only had enough ingredients and time for one batch of frosting.  It looked easy enough to make however.  Everything went along smoothly until about the end of the mixing time.  The recipe says that the mixture will at first look curdled and separated, but will eventually, after 7-8 minutes, all come together in a silky, smooth frosting.  I mixed with my whisk on my KitchenAid stand mixer, but after 8 minutes, it still looked a little separated.  I didn’t have a lot of time to keep mixing, so I tasted it, and it tasted just fine, and it looked as if it would pipe just fine, so I went ahead and piped it onto the cupcakes.  The end result is what you see in the photo above – you can see it isn’t smooth and silky!

I did try to swirl some red into the frosting, but I couldn’t find red gel food coloring, so I used liquid and I’ll just say that it didn’t work as well as the gel would have!

I have to say that I’m not a big fan of peppermint cupcakes in general, but these tasted quite nice.  However, I absolutely loved the leftovers – after storing them in the refrigerator, I stuck them in the microwave for about 12 seconds.  When I cut into the cupcake with a fork, I was surprised to see the ganache oozing out, just like a lava cake!  It was delicious and was actually a perfect match for a cup of coffee – almost like a peppermint mocha!

When it comes to the frosting, if I were to make these again, I’d probably make peppermint Swiss meringue buttercream to accompany these, instead of the frosting I used here.

You can find the recipe, as well as step-by-step photos, for these cupcakes at Our Best Bites!

In October 2009 there were two cupcake challenges that I participated in.  One was Iron Cupcake: Earth, where the theme was “music”; the other was Cupcake Hero, where the theme was “Halloween/pumpkin”.  I wanted to compete in both.  I also had a package of zombie hands and spiders cupcake toppers that I had ordered from Bake It Pretty.  Hm, how to put them to good use while coming up with an idea for both competitions….

This scary zombie cupcake was thus born.  I entered it into Iron Cupcake: Earth, and the song I chose to go with it was one of the best all-time songs ever, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.  It was perfect!  I entered it into Cupcake Hero as well.  It wasn’t very popular in the voting polls, but that’s okay because since posting it on my blog, this cupcake has received thousands of more views than any other recipe I’ve posted.  I’m surprised to see that this year, my zombie hand cupcake is once again the most popular recipe on my blog so far in October.  It was even listed in the St Louis River Front Times in the Best Twelve Halloween-Themed Cupcakes (at #9) on October 12, 2010.

Click here to view the original post with  more pictures and details.  To sum it up, the zombie hand cupcake is made up of a chocolate pumpkin cupcake filled with pumpkin buttercream.  It is frosted in a mound of chocolate frosting which is completely coated with finely crushed Oreos.  The “tombstone” is one half of an Oreo Fudgee cookie.

Okay, so that cupcake took care of my zombie hands, but I still had the spiders to use…

These are one of THE best cupcakes I have EVER had the pleasure of eating and making.  These little cuppies blew my mind.  The inspiration for the combination of flavors came from looking at one simple recipe for a caramel pumpkin pie.  A little later, I turned that idea into these pumpkin dulce de leche cupcakes.  They start with a pumpkin cupcake that is filled with dulce de leche.  They are frosted with dulce de leche buttercream and the spiderweb design is simply melted chocolate with a smidgen of shortening mixed in.  The spiders looked great on them.  And I entered these into Cupcake Hero as well, which won me a place in the throwdown with Samantha of Sweet Remedy – we ended up tying for first place!

I just can’t express in words how delicious these were, you just have to make them for yourself!

Now back in October of 2010, I still have the zombie hands and spiders, but I haven’t made any Halloween cupcakes this year.  I’m not even sure if I will at all.  Halloween isn’t so big in Australia, and making Autumn-themed food is a little out of season, as it is Spring here!  But, while I haven’t been inspired to make a Halloween cupcake, I was inspired to make an Autumn one.  I grew up in Indiana, I’ve spent a huge majority of my life there, so this time of year is naturally Autumn to me.  I wanted to make a contribution to Autumn-themed food in the Northern Hemisphere, even though I’m not there to enjoy the beautiful red, orange and yellow trees, the pumpkin pies and festivals…

So I bring you a little pumpkin cupcake with white chocolate frosting, drizzled in caramel sauce and topped off with a shard of walnut praline.  It’s the first cupcake picture I’ve ever taken outside.  It’s sort of a contrast in a way, to me, with this Autumn-themed cupcake, sitting on bright green grass.  Autumn should be chilly, the deciduous vegetation should be turning brown, but here in Sydney, it is Spring, and whatever was dormant over the Winter is now coming back to life in brilliant shades of green.  Beautiful, yes, but it’s completely backwards to me.  It’s something I will never get used to.

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He doesn’t like pureed food.  I believe it’s because he has to be spoon-fed to eat it properly, and when he sees his older sister and brother eating with their fingers or a fork or spoon, he wants to eat like they are.  After all, spoon-feeding is for babies!

Recently I went shopping for bigger clothes for Miles with my mother-in-law and bought him a couple of outfits.  You’d think that he could just wear clothes that his 3-year-old brother had grown out of, but don’t forget that we moved to the Southern Hemisphere – the summery clothes that fit his older brother when he was 1 year old will not do in winter Down Under!  Our seasons are completely opposite and this has been a little annoying, as we’ve had to basically buy all new clothing for the baby.  Ah well, it’s not all bad though – shopping for baby clothes is so fun (and terribly addicting)!

For Miles’ first birthday celebration I planned on making a simple batch of colorful cupcakes.  I decided on chocolate-on-chocolate cupcakes with mini rainbow chocolate chip decorations.

The chocolate cake is vegan.  No, we haven’t turned vegan, or even vegetarian.  When I saw these cupcakes at Sweet Tooth I thought they looked so incredibly soft and moist that I wanted to make them straight away.  The cupcakes have no eggs and no butter in them; instead they use coconut milk and canola oil, plus a touch of almond meal.  They sounded fabulous, and they tasted amazing.  They had the most lovely soft texture and the moistness factor was extreme.  I’m seriously considering using this recipe as my go-to chocolate cupcakes.

What I also love about these cupcakes is that they stay soft when refrigerated.  The butter in cupcakes usually make them too firm when eaten straight from the refrigerator, but these vegan cupcakes, with no butter, stayed soft  (okay, well, they firmed up slightly) and tasted great straight out of the refrigerator.

And something else I love about these cupcakes – you don’t have to wait for your butter, eggs and milk to come up to room temperature to begin this recipe. You can grab the ingredients from your pantry and get straight to work.

The frosting on these cupcakes is chocolate cream cheese frosting (not vegan).  It was only so-so.  The recipe is from Martha Stewart and is simply a combination of melted chocolate, cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar.  I won’t be making it again.  I’m not really big on cream cheese, which is possibly why I didn’t like this frosting.

With the cake being so soft and the frosting being so smooth, the crunch of the rainbow chocolate chips was a welcome addition.  And they made these cupcakes very colorful!

My final word – I wholeheartedly recommend making these cupcakes (just the cake part, not the frosting!) no matter if you’re vegan, vegetarian, omnivore or even carnivore!  If you love soft-textured and moist chocolate cakes, this recipe is definitely for you.

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes
Adapted from Sweet Tooth and Love & Olive Oil
Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients
1 cup coconut milk
1/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons almond meal
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, whisk together, by hand, the coconut milk, sugar, oil, and vanilla extract. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, almond meal, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. With the mixer on low-speed, slowly add the dry ingredients to the coconut milk mixture until it is uniform and smooth (do not overmix).

Pour batter in liners, filling cups no more than 2/3 full (3 tablespoons of batter). Bake 18-20 inutes, or until cake tester comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Peanut butter cupcakes with white chocolate frosting and a sprinkling of white chocolate shavings!  I have to say that the peanut butter flavor really overpowers the white chocolate frosting, even though the frosting really does taste like white chocolate.  It still tastes pretty darn good though!

A note about the frosting – make it as soon as you’re ready to eat it.  It starts out nice and white, but after it sits for a few hours, it starts to turn yellowish.

And finally, keep a glass of cold milk nearby because just like straight peanut butter, these cupcakes stick to the roof of your mouth!

Peanut Butter Cupcakes
Adapted from I Heart Cuppycakes
Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup smooth peanut butter, room temp
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk

Method
Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin tin cupcs with paper cupcake liners

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl and set aside

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter, peanut butter and brown sugar until smoothly blended and lightened in color, about 1 minute. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed during mixing. Mix in egg. Add vanilla and beat for 1 minute or until batter smooth.

On low speed, add the flour mixture in 3 additions and the milk in 2 additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and mixing until the flour is incorporated and the batter looks smooth.

Fill each liner with a generous 1/4 cup of batter, to about 1/3 inch below the top of the liner. Bake just until the tops feel firm and are lightly browned and a toothpic inserted in the center comes out clean, about 22 minutes. There will be cracks on the top. Cool cupcakes for 10 minutes in the pan on wire rack.

White Chocolate Buttercream
Adapted from BBC Good Food
Makes enough for 12 cupcakes

Ingredients
100g white chocolate
140g unsalted butter
140g icing sugar

Method
Melt the chocolate over a double boiler, stirring often. Leave to cool. Beat the butter and icing sugar in a large bowl until creamy. Beat in the chocolate. Use immediately.

We just had to keep looking on the bright side – our plane finally touching down in Sydney.

We’ve been back for about 7 months now and it feels like we never even spent those 3 long years in the US.  Even though we did spend all that time there, we didn’t make many friends and we didn’t know our neighbors very well; we didn’t even get out much (but there’s so much more to do here than where we were in Indiana).  Here, we are lucky to have some great neighbors – one of them even grows their own fruit and vegetables, organically, and are kind enough to share their bounty with us, such as butternut pumpkins, persimmons, plums, lemons and limes.  I’ve made pumpkin bread, persimmon bread, a lime tart, lemon melting moments and lemon butter with some of these fruits.  It’s great to bake with fresh food that I know is free from chemicals.

A few weeks ago, our neighbor gave us a bag full of lemons.  I had to run through a list of what I could make with lemons!  For this post I’m going to feature lemon meringue cupcakes.  I used the zest and juice of a couple of the lemons to make these cupcakes.  If you’re going to use and eat the zest of a citrus fruit, I highly recommend that you buy organic as the skin of citrus fruit absorbs a lot of those nasty chemicals that are sprayed onto them.

The recipe for these lemon meringue cupcakes comes from Martha Stewart, of course.  I don’t own her Cupcakes book, but this is one of the many recipes in that book that are already on her website.

The cupcakes are really nice, and my husband even exclaimed, in the middle of a mouthful of his cupcake, that they were really good.  I didn’t expect him to like a lemon meringue cupcake, but he certainly did!

The cake is soft and moist, and very lemony due to the addition of the lemon zest and juice.  The meringue frosting, although I made a mess with the sugar syrup, turned out really well and was super marshmallowy.  The lemon curd, well, I cheated and bought a jar of lemon curd from the store!

I don’t own a kitchen blow-torch, so I stuck these cupcakes under the broiler for a few minutes.  It didn’t brown like Martha’s did, of course, but at least by doing that, it gave the meringue a slightly crunchy skin.

Martha’s lemon meringue cupcakes are light, airy and fresh, and would be a perfect summery dessert.  Of course, it’s winter here in Australia, so I can only imagine what it would be like to eat these in summer!

To our neighbors, if you’re reading this, you know who you are, and thank you for sharing with us!

Recipe source: Martha Stewart

First of all, let me say that I’ve been planning these cupcakes for weeks.  It all started when I made the coconut pancakes with bananas, creme fraiche and caramel sauce last month, which was a recipe from Valli Little in delicious. magazine.  I loved those pancakes.  The combination of those flavors was like nothing else my tastebuds have ever experienced (probably mostly because I had never eaten creme fraiche!).  I started thinking that this flavor combination would taste great as a cupcake as well, and I haven’t made cupcakes in ages!

Over the past week I finally made up my mind as to how I would make these cupcakes.  I would use a banana cupcake recipe and stir sweetened shredded coconut into the batter.  The frosting would be something of my own creation, which turned out fabulous – creme fraiche whipped with confectioners’ sugar.  I made the same caramel sauce for these cupcakes as I made for the pancakes, except I replaced the thickened cream with coconut milk (I would have used coconut cream if I had had any).  This turned out fabulous as well, such a great flavor.

The assembly was easy.  The creme fraiche frosting was a perfect consistency and instead of using my piping bag I just used a Ziploc bag, snipped a corner off and piped a small mound on top of each cupcake.  I wanted the coconut caramel sauce to be concentrated in one spot, as opposed to just drizzling it over the frosting) so that it’d be able to be tasted and the only way I could think of to do this was to use a baby spoon to make an indentation on the very top of the frosting (see photo below this paragraph) and fill it with the coconut caramel sauce.  I then placed a slice of banana on top of the hole and gently pushed it down to cover the pocket of sauce (and threw on a bit of extra sauce just for the fun of it).

I’m very pleased with how these turned out.  They very closely match the flavor of those coconut pancakes, which is what I was aiming for.  The creme fraiche is slightly sweet with the addition of some confectioners’ sugar, yet still slightly tangy.  These cupcakes are best served on the day of baking due to the creme fraiche, as well as the use of fresh sliced bananas, which can turn brown quickly.  Be sure to place the sliced bananas on top of the cupcakes just before serving.

If you are interested in making these cupcakes yourself, I realize that the main problem you may have is in finding, or even affording, creme fraiche.  Creme fraiche is not available at every grocery store.  Luckily I can find it at my local store, but it comes at a price.  It is $6 for 250g.

Don’t despair though, you can make your own creme fraiche.  I haven’t done it myself, but it is so easy that I may just do this in the coming weeks.  You can find the instructions at joyofbaking.com.

I’d also like to point out that you can use whatever banana cake/cupcake recipe you prefer for these cupcakes.  I chose one of the first ones I came across that I had all the ingredients for!

And yes, you guessed right, I am watching too much MasterChef – look at those silly “artistic” blobs and smears of coconut caramel sauce on the plate!

On a sort of related note, I’d like to say how shocked I was to find the above chocolate-brown cupcake liners at my local grocery store!  This particular color of cupcake liner is very much sought after.  I bought a pack of 100 for $2.65 at Woolworth’s (in Sydney, Australia).  Awesome!

Anyway, here are the recipes, enjoy!

Banana Coconut Cupcakes
Adapted from Food Network
Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter (113g), softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 large ripe bananas, peeled, and mashed
1/2 rounded cup sweetened, shredded coconut
1 fresh banana, sliced, for decoration

Method
Preheat the oven to 350F (180C). Line 1 (12-cup) muffin pan with paper cupcake liners.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, add the butter and the sugar. Beat with a hand-held mixer until combined. Add the sour cream and the vanilla extract. Slowly beat in the eggs, 1 at a time. Incorporate the dry mixture and wet mixtures together until thoroughly combined. Add the bananas and shredded coconut, being careful not to over mix. Using an ice cream scoop, fill each cupcake liner 3/4 way full. Bake in the preheated oven until the tops turn golden-brown and when a toothpick, inserted in the middle of the cupcake, comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Remove the cupcakes from the oven to a wire rack and let cool before frosting.

Creme Fraiche Frosting
Adapted from myself
Makes enough to frost 12 cupcakes, plus some leftover

Ingredients
250g creme fraiche
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

Method
Combine creme fraiche and confectioners sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Using the whisk attachment, whisk until thick and creamy, being careful not to overmix or it may become grainy. Use immediately.

Coconut Caramel Sauce
Adapted from delicious. magazine, November 2009
Makes about 2 cups, you’ll have plenty leftover

Ingredients
50g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1/2 cup firmly packed (100g) brown sugar
3 tablespoons honey
150ml coconut milk or coconut cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method
Stir all ingredients in a pan over low heat to dissolve sugar, then simmer for 5 minutes, until thickened. Cool to room temperature before using on cupcakes, otherwise it will melt the frosting.

Use leftovers for pancakes, pies or ice cream.

Assembly
Pipe a small mound of creme fraiche frosting on top of each cupcake using a plain round tip, or a Ziploc bag. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Using a small spoon or butter knife, insert the tip into the very top of the frosting and turn in a circular motion while pushing down to make an indentation, or pocket, in the frosting (see photo above). Fill this pocket with cooled coconut caramel sauce. Place a piece of sliced banana firmly, but gently, on top of the pocket of sauce to completely cover it. Drizzle a little bit of the sauce on top of the banana. Serve immediately.

If not serving immediately, I suggest frosting the cupcakes, and making the indentation beforehand. Store in the refrigerator. When it is time to serve, fill the indentation with the sauce and place the banana on top. Once decorated, the cupcakes are best eaten immediately.