Coconut Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

It's always hard to decide what cupcake to make next.  My friend at work loves coconut, so I decided to do something with coconut that I hoped she would love.  I scoured pinterest and my favorite food blogs and stumbled upon someone's version of an Ina Garten coconut cake.  Who makes a version of hers?  She is amazing, why would you want to change one of her recipes?  So I went straight to the source, foodnetwork.com and searched for the recipe.  So this is the recipe that I used:

Ingredients
3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pans
2 cups sugar
5 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons pure almond extract
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the pans
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup milk
4 ounces sweetened shredded coconut

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 (9-inch) round cake pans, then line them parchment paper. Grease them again and dust lightly with flour.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium-high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until light yellow and fluffy. Crack the eggs into a small bowl. With the mixer on medium speed, add the eggs 1 at a time, scraping down the bowl once during mixing. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix well. The mixture might look curdled; don't be concerned.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the batter in 3 parts, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. Fold in the 4 ounces of coconut with a rubber spatula.
Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/coconut-cake-recipe/index.html?oc=linkback

I am amazed that Ina is not professionally trained.  She taught herself to cook by reading French and New England cookbooks.  Her Food Network show "Barefoot Contessa" is one of my favorites.  And the fact that she has been married to her high school sweetheart for almost 45 years is icing on the cake (pun intended).

This batter is just lovely.  This photo just doesn't do it justice.  It's thick and creamy and the smell of vanilla, almond extract and coconut is divine.  The recipe is intended for a layer cake, and so it actually made 36 cupcakes instead of the usual 24.

This cake is very dense and heavy.  At first I thought I had done something wrong because I was expecting a light, fluffy cake, but, even though it is heavy, it is moist and tender.

I found a recipe for chocolate buttercream on www.Createdby-Diane.com that I thought I would try.  It's quite delicious.

1 cup butter
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 tbls milk or cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Beat butter with mixer until pale and fluffy, add sugar cocoa and milk along with the extract and mix until smooth and creamy.

Knowing that I had 36 cupcakes to frost, I doubled the recipe.

I decided to frost them a little differently than I usually do, I did a frosted gem effect with a large star tip.  It made it kind of pokey, but pretty and made little valleys for the coconut and almond pieces to fall into.

They were a hit!