A couple days ago I had a hankering for some coconut cupcakes.  Yum!  I went online and found a few recipes.  After looking through all of them I had it narrowed down to<a href="http://www.marthastewart.com/"> Martha's</a> recipe and the <a href="http://www.barefootcontessa.com/">Barefoot Contessa's</a> recipe.  It wasn't a hard choice when I looked at the ingredients - the Barefoot Contessa wanted me to use <strong>SIX</strong> sticks of butter for 20 cupcakes!  Are you kidding me?  So naturally I went with Martha.

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I used this recipe <a href="http://www.marthastewart.com/316189/coconut-cupcakes-with-seven-minute-frost?czone=food/best-cupcake-recipes/our-best-cupcakes&amp;center=276944&amp;gallery=274461&amp;slide=263819">here</a> - but of course I am terrible at following directions.  So I goofed a little.  When I was reading the <a href="http://www.marthastewart.com/336105/basic-cupcake-how-to">instructions</a> it said to pre-heat the oven (check!), then to whisk all the dry ingredients together.  So I did that.... then it said to cream the butter and sugar together. Damn it Martha!  Sugar <em>is</em> a dry ingredient!  I had only butter and coconut milk in my sad wet ingredient bowl and then this big dry ingredient bowl with flour, baking powder, salt, coconut and of course sugar.

I continued to mix - I figured if these cupcakes came out bad that I would blame it all on Martha.  So I went ahead and mixed in my eggs (one at a time) - because after the wet ingredient dry ingredient fiasco I learned my lesson.  <em>Always read the whole paragraph!</em>  Then I mixed in my dry ingredients in three batches (like Martha said).  The batter looked a little thick and kind of sticky after mixing in all the ingredients - so I just added more coconut milk until I thought the consistency looked right.  If they were too gooey I'm not sure who I would have blamed that one on.

So I line my cupcakes with these brand new silicone cupcake liners that I got at Bed Bath &amp; Beyond and fill them up 2/3 of the way - into the oven they go! Here I go to make some frosting.  Now again being bad at directions - "nah - I don't like Martha's frosting recipe, I'll make up my own."  I knew I wanted a cream cheese frosting and pulled it out of the fridge a while ago to bring it up to room temp.  I mixed the cream cheese with 1/2 a stick of butter the rest of the coconut milk, about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar (I lost track) and a about 2-3 tsp of lemon juice and 3-4 tsp of vanilla extract.  Mixed it all together till it tasted right.  It was good!  But a little runny.

About 25 minutes later the cupcakes were ready to come out of the oven. They looked normal and cupcake like.  I did it!

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I waited till they were cool and frosted them and then sprinkled coconut over the frosting.  I took a bite - they were oh so yummy!  Rory didn't really like them all that much since he doesn't like cream cheese frosting.  I was not aware of this.  But he ate the cakes that weren't frosted yet.  He loved those - they were very moist.

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Since I only had one cupcake tin I make a cake out of the rest of the batter.  I think it came out good.... it looks good, but I haven't tried it.  The only thing is that it took about twice as long to bake.  I am going to bring it to the shop tomorrow so that I don't eat it all up.  All in all the coconut cupcake endeavor was quite the success. I would have liked it to me more coconut flavored, maybe next time I'll use six sticks of butter for more coconut flavor.

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