BB: Coconut Cupcakes with Milk Chocolate Ganache

A blast-from-the-past recipe this week for Rose's Alpha Bakers, at least those who were also in the Heavenly Bakers group: this week's Coconut Cupcakes are a re-configured cupcake version of the "Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake" from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. As it happens, I had baked the RHC version as cupcakes. I seem to be shrinking things even further, as I did this week's recipe as mini cupcakes.

This coconut cake is a white cake made with coconut milk and flavored with coconut extract (I had an oil-based "coconut flavor"). I halved the recipe and got 23 mini cupcakes from the batch. With the small amounts of various ingredients to work with, I dug out a hand-held mixer for the job and the cake batter came together very quickly.

For the frosting, I went with the "Custom Rose Blend Milk Chocolate Ganache" instead of the multi-stage buttercream (been there, done that, not really my thing...). The custom blend ganache takes white chocolate, dark chocolate, and cream to make a ganache, instead of just a chocolate of the desired level plus cream. I chopped my chocolate by hand and poured the hot cream over it instead of using a food processor, again feeling that the smaller amount of ingredients didn't warrant the full sized appliance. Needing to rush the cooling by sticking it in the fridge (more week night baking), I overshot a bit and lost the nice shiny finish to the ganache, but the texture was still smooth enough in the end.

A couple of the cupcakes got eaten plain (ahem) and I enjoyed the delicate coconut flavor. With the ganache applied plus some (labor saving) Trader Joe's toasted coconut chips for decor, the dominant flavor is the chocolate--which is nice, but a balance with the coconut would have been better. I think full-sized cupcakes, not overly plied with ganache, might have balanced the components better.