candy bar cupcakes part 1

Some time ago I found a feature in Food Network Magazine on cupcakes that replicated the taste of classic candy bars. I ripped out the pages of course, and requested the chocolate peanut butter Reeses impersonators for my birthday cupcakes. Recently I went back to the list of recipes and made the Almond Joy and Snickers rip offs - one for a party and another for my dad's birthday (the king of all Snickers lovers). Here are some pics of the Almond Joy cupcakes in process. (I'll cover the Snickers ones in a second post.)

Humor me while I learn my camera. You'll notice that the Almond Joy pictures are darker due to the horrible tungsten light in my old kitchen. The Snickers cupcakes were the first I made in our new house, so in a way they christened my oven for future baking endeavors.


I had never used cream of coconut before. These cupcakes had three forms - regular shredded coconut, cream of coconut, and coconut extract.


(Love me some wall-e cupcake wrappers.)


The eggs have different shell colors because of the different heritage breeds of chicken they come from. We get our eggs from a local farm that does delivery drop-offs in Pittsburgh and also has a booth at the Pittsburgh Public Market (love!). They are on the pricey side, but crack them open and the yolk is a vibrant yellow (from the chicken's diet, not from the dye in your typical grocery store eggs).



(Eggs and cream of coconut about to be whisked with a Rorschach pattern of vanilla.)

That gets set aside to deal with the dry ingredients and butter. It should have a crumby consistency.


Beat in your egg mixture, and it starts to look something like this.


Side note. I have a habit of using a random coffee mug from my way too large collection to hold spatulas between scrapings. I'm going to try to start documenting them as part of the process. Here is one of my beloved Pittsburgh mugs, doing its duty.


The cake portions go in the oven...


...so that you can work on the coconut candy topping. It is basically cooked milk and coconut. This is Mark's awesome measuring cup that I smashed to smithereens when we moved. Sad face.



Cupcakes are done!


Time for some chocolate.


Get the coconut topping off the stove and cooled for quite awhile. Then start assembling.



I had a ton of leftover coconut for 24 cupcakes, so unless you want to dig in to the bowl with a giant spoon afterward, you'd probably be safe halving the coconut topping portion of the recipe.