Coconut Cupcakes with Seven Minute Frosting

Today I asked Frank what ideas he had for a cupcake. True to form, he suggested coconut cupcakes...he LOVES coconut cake! So, tonight I gave it a whirl. I even made him a small layered coconut cake.

I used my mom's 1-2-3-4 cake recipe, but I added a box of vanilla pudding to the batter. Instead of the sugar water mixture that we usually pour on the layers, I used condensed milk with a little coconut flavoring. Mmmm, any excuse to use condensed milk :).

1-2-3-4 Cake

1 cup shortening (I used butter flavored for this cake)

2 cups sugar

3 cups self-rising flour, sifted

4 eggs

1 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 small box vanilla pudding (not part of original 1-2-3-4 recipe)

Additional Needs - will be needed later

Coconut

Can condensed milk

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs 1 at a time. Stir in flour alternately with milk (start and end with flour). Add vanilla. Add pudding mix. Put batter in pans and cook at 350 for ~20 minutes.

I got 3 - 4" cake layers and 24 cupcakes from this.

Once the cupcakes were cool, I poked holes in the tops with a fork and sprinkled coconut over the holes. I added 1/4 tsp coconut flavoring to a can of condensed milk, then microwaved it for 30 seconds. This was spooned over the coconut, seeping in the holes.

Seven Minute Frosting

2 egg whites

1 1/2 cups sugar

5 tbsp water

2tsp karo syrup (light corn syrup)

Put all ingredients in the top of a double boiler. Beat with a mixer while heating. Make sure you don't get any water from the bottom part in your frosting. It's done when it will hold peaks. For the first time, I pulled egg whites from the freezer to make this frosting. They were left over from a German Chocolate cake and I had frozen them. I was a little nervous about it, but they did just fine.

I iced the cupcakes and then dipped them in the coconut.

Frank tried one tonight and gave it a thumbs up. We'll see how my co-workers like them tomorrow. One thing, they are messy!