Pina Colada Cupcakes

Pina Colada is one of my fave cocktails (after Long Island Iced Tea) and seeing as I LOVE CAKE, I thought I’d try to combine the two.

You’ll need:
200g Unsalted butter
150g Caster Sugar
185g Self Raising Flour
1 tbsp Baking Powder
2 Eggs
160ml Rum or coconut rum
250g Icing Sugar
250g Fresh or tinned pineapple
200g Dessicated coconut
Dried pineapple (optional)
Yellow food colouring (optional)

Throw the eggs and the caster sugar into a mixer. switch it on! Chuck in the baking powder, HALF of the butter and Half of the coconut. Add all of the fresh pineapple and HALF of the rum. Sift in the flour. When you have a nice smooth cakelike mixture, stick a finger in and taste it… Tastes like Pina Colada doesn’t it!

Mixture should be enough for 14 cupcakes. Spoon into cases and lob them in the oven at 175degrees for 20-30 mins depending on your oven and how full you fill the cases.

Now you see all your remaining ingredients sitting there patiently on the side? Bung the whole lot in a bowl and mix.

When the cupcakes are cool, spread/pipe/dollop (or whatever technique you wish to use), the icing onto the cakes and decorate!

🙂

In hindsight I would have used dried pineapple atop the icing as it will keep longer and taste sweeter. But if you do use fresh, I’d recommend putting it on immediately before serving/consumption.

Decorate as you wish! I wanted to use cocktail umbrellas, but I didn’t have any! So I used a pinch of edible glitter and a straw!
EPIC Food FAILS for Pina Colada Cupcakes

ICING… If you want to pipe your icing on, leave the dessicated coconut out and use an essence instead…
WHY? I tried using dessicated coconut… It clogged the piping nozzle and ended in a messy greasy disaster!

PINEAPPLE… Umm yeah… EPIC food fail here… Don’t use fresh pineapple in the icing!
WHY? I thought it would be a fab idea to make the buttercream icing nice and fruity, so on the first attempt, I added fresh pineapple… the whole lot curdled! don’t do it!

BUTTER… Use unsalted butter!
WHY? I found out the hard way – if you use salted butter, when you add the rum, the rum emphasises the flavour of the salt, making the salt overpowering and totally destroying the flavour of the icing!

EGGS… I will always recommend using free range eggs
WHY? Imagine having to squeeze eggs out of your nether regions whilst trapped in a cage… No I don’t fancy it either!