Recipes from the Wedding: the Sweet

As you know, we've just had a wedding in the family. As part of the festivities, my in-laws held an open house in their backyard. Having had a more formal reception the night of the wedding, complete with catered salmon and a 4-tiered, 55-pound wedding cake made by my amazing husband, we knew we wanted to keep the menu simple for the open house. We served nothing but dips--salsa, clam dip, hummus, baba ganoush, texas caviar, artichoke dip, you name it. And for dessert--what else? Cupcakes. Next time I'll give you some of the delish savory recipes. Today, the sweet.

My little cupcake staff and I made 300 cupcakes--mint chocolate chip, lemon, and coconut. When you're dealing with that kind of volume, there's no time for cakes from scratch, so we used all cake mixes, but doctored them up a bit. You've seen the mint chocolates here. For the lemons, we used lemon mixes with the lemon frosting from here. And for the coconut, we made white mixes with coconut extract, topped with coconut buttercream, and toasted coconut. (Darling cupcake papers from Bake It Pretty.)

Coconut buttercream frosting:

Mix 3 sticks butter and 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Add 3 tablespoons milk and coconut extract to taste

For the toasted coconut, spread coconut on a sheet pan and put it in the oven to broil. Watch it like a hawk (I may or may not have burned my first batch--the smoke alarm alerted me!) and stir it around as it browns.

All three of these cupcakes have become major players in my repertoire. Hope you enjoy them as much as the guests did!

happy caking,

anne