Coconut Rum-Raisin Cupcakes

If the sight of coconut rum-raisin cupcakes doesn't get your blood flowing and your juices pumping then frankly, I don't know what will. But please, try to hold yourself together. In Martha's cookbook each cupcake comes with a description. Perhaps to prepare you for what's coming or to tell you what the cupcakes are supposed to taste like in case you can't figure it out by the name of the recipe or the ingredients in it. Either way, the lovely description that comes with these cupcakes is as follows, "Drizzled with liquor-spiked caramel glaze and filled with rum-soaked raisins, these cupcakes are reminiscent of a popular ice cream flavor." Your mouth is now watering isn't it? Mine too.

I will be honest, the only thing I've ever heard involving rum raisin anything has to do with ice cream. I know 2 things about this particular flavor of ice cream. One involves a rather entertaining story about my dad that I don't quite remember all the details to, my mom could tell you. The other involves Bobby accidentally trying the ice cream on our vacation to the Dominican Republic last year when he thought what he was eating was vanilla ice cream. Honest mistake. It should be taken into consideration that the ice cream at our resort certainly couldn't hold a candle to my beloved Perry's Ice Cream (it's made outside my hometown and I miss it so much) but even so, it was not very tasty. Combine that knowledge with my dislike of coconut and I was not feeling particularly good about how these cupcakes would taste.

As you all are aware from reading about these stout cupcakes and these sticky toffee pudding cupcakes, I'm not very familiar with alcohol. And, if you haven't already figured it out from the name of these cupcakes, they required rum. Dark rum if we're being specific. Is Captain Morgan considered dark rum? I don't know, but today it was. We have nearly half a handle of Captain Morgan on top of our fridge that my dad left at our house that we never drink. Instead of buying more rum that we wouldn't drink I used the rum we already had on hand that we don't drink. Now that there's less in the bottle it at least looks like we're trying.

Nothing about this recipe was difficult, and in fact the batter pre rum, raisins and coconut was really good. Like, really, really good. As soon as I tasted it I suddenly had high hopes for the cupcakes. I thought even rum, raisins and coconut couldn't destroy this tasty concoction that I had created. I was right. Even once I had mixed in the above-mentioned ingredients the batter was still quite delicious. Things were looking good.

I filled my buttered and floured pans (someday cupcake liners will come back into my life) three-quarters full and baked the first batch for 30 total minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time. After the first batch I decided I could knock down the baking time a little bit. The cupcakes didn't turn out burnt or anything, but they were a little more golden than I thought they should be. For the remaining 2 batches I baked them for 26 total minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time, they were perfect. I tried a cupcake without the glaze and it was good. The only thing I didn't love were the raisins. I like raisins and they were fine in the cupcake, but the cake itself was so good it was almost like the raisins got in the way. In a surprising turn of events I didn't mind the coconut at all.

The rum-caramel glaze was nerve racking to make and I'm still not quite sure if it turned out exactly how it was supposed to, but it tasted good. And really, that's all the matters. I've made a glaze that required a similar process before, though I can't remember which cupcake it was for, and I always hate having to wait for the sugar-water mixture to turn color. I feel like I never know when it's reached the right hue and I should remove it from the burner. I waited until the mixture turned to what I thought was medium amber and then removed the pan from the stove. I added the rum and heavy cream. Martha was right when she warned me that this would cause the glaze to splatter. It sure did! It was like watching an experiment or something, it was actually pretty cool. But, I think I waited too long to start stirring since I ended up having some chunks of hardened glaze. However, I wasn't too worried because there was plenty of liquid glaze to use and it tasted just fine. The alcohol wasn't even noticeable in the glaze, or in the cupcakes for that matter. If I didn't now it was there, I wouldn't have known it was there.

Stout Cupcakes

Are you sensing a theme? I know I am. What theme do you ask? Alcohol, that's what. The sticky toffee pudding cupcakes I made last week required brandy. The stout cupcakes (no recipe on Martha's site) this week required beer. Since last week's cupcakes turned out so well I was slightly optimistic that I would like these cupcakes. However, if I was a frequent drinker of alcohol, beer would not be my first choice, and since these cupcakes contained beer, I wasn't overflowing with hope.

My level of knowledge when it comes to beer is just slightly superior to my knowledge of liquor, so it is fair to say that I don't know much. Thankfully, the recipe suggested that Guinness would be a good choice for these cupcakes, so Guinness is what I chose. It of course had to be the most expensive choice. Then again, only the best will do. True story, I once made penne a la vodka with Grey Goose. Call me crazy (it's okay, my entire family did when I told them), but it was the only vodka we had in the house! Plus it was a gift and roughly 1 year and some odd months later it's still in the freezer. Anyway, back to the beer... I (Bobby, since he was funding this particular grocery trip) bought a 6-pack of Guinness. I only needed about 1 1/2 bottles. So if you're thirsty we've got some in the fridge for you. Right next to the Grey Goose.

While I am an alcohol novice I do know that there is a special way you're supposed to poor Guinness (right?), and I think it's supposed to settle a little bit too before you drink it. I could be wrong. Either way, the first thing I did before working on any other portion of the recipe was pour the beer into a glass so it could settle. While the Guinness did its thing I combined the dry ingredients. I also zested an orange so I wouldn't have to do that later. After all the dry ingredients were combined I put all the wet ingredients together in a large bowl. In the midst of doing this I came upon a moment of uncertainty. While measuring the amount of beer that I would need (1 1/4 cups) I wasn't sure if I should measure from the top of the foam or the bottom. I decided not to count the foam and measured 1 1/4 cups of beer sans foam. This may or may not have been the right decision. Once all the ingredients were in the bowl I turned on my hand mixer and proceeded to make a mess. There were so many liquid ingredients I knew I was going to have a bit of a sloshy mess when it came time to use my hand mixer and I was right. I did my best to contain it and a majority of the splatter landed on my t-shirt (not a problem since I was wearing gym clothes) and not on the walls or countertop. Win. I combined the wet and dry ingredients with my hand mixer and had myself Pyrex-pourable cupcake batter!

The only thing better than Pyrex-pourable batter is not having to butter and flour cupcake pans. I have finally come to another recipe in this section that allowed me to use cupcake liners. How I've missed them so. A little sneak preview for you... I get to use them next week too. Hooray! I filled the cupcake liners three-quarters full and had myself 28 cupcakes, just like the recipe said I would. The cupcakes baked for 20 total minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time. They were perfectly baked.

The stout glaze for these cupcakes was very simple, it only had 2 ingredients. Confectioner's sugar and you guessed it... more Guinness! 2 things that just came to me... I feel like I should have made these last week for St. Patrick's Day. And, when I took Rollins to the vet this week (nothing to worry about, just a couple booster shots for the standard doggy vaccines) there was another dog there named Guinness, and he was brown. I digress. Back to the glaze. It was very easy to make, but I was a little concerned that it was going to taste too much like Guinness for my preference. Crisis averted. It didn't really taste anything like Guinness. I know what Guinness tastes like because I tried it while making the cupcakes. It is not good. How people willingly drink it I'm not sure I'll ever understand. While I didn't enjoy the Guinness itself, I did enjoy the cupcakes. They're reminiscent of a spike cake, or molasses-type baked good. Right up my alley.

Sticky Toffee Pudding Cupcakes

I get the sticky part. I get the toffee part. I get the cupcake part. But, I don't get the pudding part of these sticky pudding toffee cupcakes (please note this recipe isn't the one that's in the cookbook, but it's as close as I could find). Maybe after we're done here, you'll be able to tell me.

When I read through the recipe and the ingredients I would need, 2 things immediately jumped out at me. One, I once again had to deal with dates. And two, I needed to buy some booze as the recipe requires brandy. I suppose the timing is rather appropriate since St. Patrick's Day was yesterday. But along with not being a drinker, I'm also not Irish. 2 strikes against me already. Anyway, from the few trips I've made to the liquor store (Crazy Bruce's is my store of choice if you're in the Connecticut area) I know that they keep the airplane-sized bottles of liquor near the registers and I knew I would probably need just a couple nips of brandy since the recipe only required three-quarter cups of it. It took awhile to find, apparently brandy isn't a very popular liquor, but again, I wouldn't really know. I found what I needed and purchased 3 bottles. Mission accomplished. The only other thing I had to buy was dates. I did have some left over from the time I made these date-nut mini cupcakes but not knowing much about dates I was worried they would be stale, or bad, or whatever you call dates that are no longer usable. So I threw the old ones out and bought new. Just in case you were wondering, dates still look just as creepy and slug-like as they did the first time I baked with them. So gross.

I'm starting to get the impression that just about every cupcake in this section is going to require me to butter and flour the cupcake pans, which we've already established as being one of my least favorite things. This recipe was no different. Because I don't like to do it, I got that out of the way first. My next step was to chop the dates in half. I made it a priority to purchase dates that had already been pitted to save myself some work, and from having to touch the dates any more than necessary. Once the dates were cut I cooked them down in the brandy and water and prepared the dry ingredients for the batter. The worst part of this whole recipe was the smell that came from the water, brandy and dates while they were cooking. Even with the lid on the pot while they boiled, when I caught a whiff of the smell it was extremely unpleasant. So much so that I held my breath when I was in the area where the steam was coming out of the pot. Yes, it was that bad. Or yes, I'm that much of a baby. You can be the judge.

The dates didn't take that long to cook and when they were "very soft" I was supposed to puree them in the food processor until smooth. Since the mixture was pretty liquidy (technical term) I thought the blender might be a better idea. But, if Martha said I should use a food processor then I was going to use a food processor. It didn't take long for the mixture to become smooth, or to become what I decided was smooth enough. When the date mixture was smooth enough I let it cool for 15 minutes.

While the dates cooled I combined the rest of the ingredients which was almost no work at all. Once the date mixture was cool enough I combined that, and the dry ingredients with the rest of the wet ingredients. Everything came together nicely, but the batter was pretty thick and there was no way I was going to be able to pour it into the cupcake pan. Since the recipe said I would only get 14 cupcakes I decided to use all the batter for one batch and get 12 instead. I didn't want to have to butter and flour another pan for only 2 cupcakes.

I used all the batter to fill the pans which filled each of them about three-quarters full. They were baked for 24 total minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time. The cupcakes were a little big for my liking, but not too bad. While the cupcakes were baking I made the toffee glaze (this isn't the exact recipe from the cookbook either, but it's close). Since it had to be poured into the cupcake pan as soon as the cupcakes were done baking and used immediately after it was made I was feeling the pressure to get the timing just right. The glaze was easy to make even though I put all the ingredients in at once instead of waiting to put in the brandy and salt (oops!). That's what happens when you don't read the directions all the way through. Still haven't learned that lesson, but it didn't matter anyway. I ended up finishing the glaze a couple minutes before the cupcakes were done. I just gave it a couple stirs before I poured it into the well of each cupcake.

Before pouring in the glaze I was worried that the cupcakes were going to stick to the pan because they were still going to be pretty warm, but to my pleasant surprise they all came out quite nicely. I was able to tilt each of them up enough to pour in 2 tablespoons of the glaze for each cupcake. Once each cupcake received it's dose of the glaze I let them sit for 10 minutes to soak it all in before removing them from the pan and applying the next dose of glaze.

When it was time to remove the cupcakes from the pan almost all of them came out nicely. Parts of some of the bottoms were stuck in the pan, but it wasn't enough to be upsetting. It was enough to eat. After all the cupcakes were removed I applied 2 more tablespoons of glaze to each and let it set until finally it was time to taste test. My favorite. They were delicious. I loved them, and they're definitely my favorite from this section so far. I especially knew they were good because after I was finished photographing one I gave the rest to Bobby so he could try it. Normally he takes a bite and gives it back to me, but this time he ate the whole thing. Then he told me to start giving them away so he wouldn't eat anymore. He's shedding for the wedding too.