vanilla and coconut cupcakes

We traveled this past weekend to Erie for my family reunion. This was the first reunion where I made my own contribution to the food. As you can guess, I had to do cupcakes. I was even going to take photos of my family enjoying them, but to be honest it was too hot to be alive so my camera stayed in the bag. I made my favorite white/vanilla cake recipe and made a new coconut buttercream with toasted coconut.

Into the oven and on to the icing!


They melted a bit in the heat, but the coconut seemed to help the icing stay on the cupcake and we avoided disaster!

blueberry birthday

We've been getting amazing fruit from local farms at our farmer's market, so I took advantage of some of our blueberries to make my mom's blueberry muffins for Mark's birthday breakfast. These muffins taste almost like cupcakes; they're irresistible!

I also used Kerrygold butter, pastured buttermilk, and the amazing local farm eggs we get. I think it made these even more delicious!

geek out: Harry Potter butterbeer cupcakes in Star Wars wrappers

Mark turned 32 last week, and this time I didn't let him choose his birthday dessert. Last year I had purchased the Star Wars cupcake kits (wrappers and picks) from Williams Sonoma intending to save them for his birthday in case they were limited edition. (You can still buy them, as well as a ton of other awesome Star Wars kitchen stuff, by the way.) I told him I was making cupcakes, but that's all he knew. I chose butterbeer cupcakes (after the drink in the Harry Potter universe) because of Mark's love for butterscotch and all things geek. So that's how we got Harry Potter cupcakes in Star Wars wrappers.

Three days ago, in a kitchen just downstairs....


The "beer" part comes from cream soda in the batter.

Light side or dark side? Rebels or empire?



With the cupcakes in the oven, the butterscotch ganache filling is up next.

(Notice I had to switch whisks. The silicone one wasn't cutting it.)

On to the butterscotch frosting!


Fill cupcakes with ganache, and frost!


Adding the characters gives the final touch. (Though admittedly a dark one, considering I didn't switch the white balance and I have no idea what to do in photo editing software.)