Coconut-Cardamom Cupcakes
Earlier this week my husband and I were just minding our own business eating dinner, totally oblivious to what was going on outside our windows. When we went upstairs to close the blinds, we were delighted to see snow coming down steadily. The next morning (coincidentally it was “Twosday” 2/22/22) we woke up to glorious sunshine sparkling across a blanket of snow and lighting up a stretch of dark Pacific NW winter days. I’m typically over the snow after Christmas but this time it felt like nature was giving me an opportunity to reset and start the year fresh with new hope. The wintry view also put me in a baking mood and reminded me that I had wanted (back in December) to make the Coconut-Cardamom Cupcakes from Sarah Kieffer’s Baking for the Holidays cookbook. Lucky for me, this recipe is listed in the “Beyond Christmas” section so I had all the permission I needed. Also, I serendipitously had some freshly ground cardamom in my pantry waiting for just the right recipe.
Coconut-Cardamom Cupcakes. Coconut-Cardamom Cupcakes. Coconut-Cardamom Cupcakes. Say that three times fast.
I find most people either love coconut or hate it. Not too many in-betweeners. I’m a coconut lover. Always have been. However, my relationship with cardamom is more one of intrigue. I want to love it, but I feel like it’s a bit of an acquired taste. The freshly grated cardamom gifted from my sister is more pungent than what you get from a store-bought container of ground cardamom. With freshly ground, you experience this spice at its fullest. If you’re not sure about it, you can always start with a little less than the recipe calls for. You may be familiar with cardamom in a chai latte or its popularity in baked goods and curries. I’ve enjoyed cardamom (for breakfast) in oatmeal, a pear cobbler and in the cinnamon-roll’s cousin - Swedish or Finnish rolls.
For this recipe, the coconut part is in the cupcakes and the cardamom is in the buttercream. It’s a lovely flavor match. The full recipe is on page 171-172 in Baking for the Holidays. Sarah Kieffer has a similar coconut recipe here that she adapted from Ina Garten – which is the coconut cupcake recipe I’ve made in the past (equally as delicious and with more chewy coconut). But really you should just buy the book!
There she is … Miss Coconut Cardamom.
Cupcake ingredients (This is HALF the recipe; see notes below):
With two of us in my household, I decided to half the recipe. I really appreciate recipes that provide weights to make the process easy.
105 g egg whites*, room temperature (from 3-4 large eggs)
½ cup coconut milk (I used full-fat, room temperature)
¼ cup crème fraiche – but I used sour cream
½ Tbs vanilla
½ tsp coconut extract
196 g all-purpose flour (about 1 3/8 cup)
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature (Cut it in 1 Tbs. pieces first and then bring to room temp.)
* I always buy Vital Farms eggs which are pasture-raised. If you’ve never had pasture-raised eggs you may not be used to the brightness of the yolks. Well, I’ve been eating these for a long time. But recently when the Vital Farms weren’t available, I bought “Happy Eggs.” These (also) pasture-raised eggs have beautiful blue and brown shells, however the yolks are soooo so orange that I had a hard time getting past that, especially when it came to scrambling them. So, long story short, I was doubly, serendipitously motivated to make these cupcakes so I could use only the whites of my remaining happy eggs.)
Cardamom Buttercream (HALF the recipe, and I still put some in freezer:
½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
4 oz cream cheese
1 Tbs corn syrup
1 tsp ground cardamom
pinch salt
2 ¼ cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Unsweetened coconut flakes for sprinkling (Bob’s Red Mill is my choice)
Directions:
Whisk the wet ingredients in a glass measuring cup (egg whites, coconut milk, sour cream, vanilla & coconut extracts) and set aside.
Add the dry ingredients to the bowl of a stand mixer (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt) and swirl until combined.
Add the butter a piece at a time while mixer is running on low speed, until your mixure looks like coarse sand.
Add half of the wet ingredients mixing on low. Turn up to medium and mix for 30 seconds. Repeat with the remainder of the wet ingredients. Scrape the bowl and mix together a few times with a spatula.
Divide the batter into two large (greased) six-cup popover pans or place liners in two standard 12-cup muffin tins**
Bake at 350 degrees for 16-22 minutes until lightly browned and/or when you press your finger lightly on top and it leaves a slight indent. Let cool on a rack for 15 minutes before removing from pan. Let cool completely before removing papers.
For the buttercream, beat the butter for 2-3 minutes on medium. Add cream cheese, corn syrup, cardamom and salt and mis 2 minutes more on medium. Let the mixer run on low and slowly add the powdered sugar and vanilla. Mix until combined, stopping to scrape the sides of bowl a couple times.
Frost the cupcakes and sprinkle with coconut. Store in the refrigerator.
My cupcake batter in my pretty little innocent aqua straight-sided cupcake papers, unknowingly filled too full.
** I really wanted the impressive tall straight sides on my cupcakes like the photo in the cookbook. I didn’t have a popover pan (which I’ve been wanting but didn’t think I needed to spend the money and have yet one more pan in my kitchen). I did have some straight-sided paper cupcake holders that I’d randomly picked up (ok, not so random - I bought them because they were aqua) at Home Goods who knows how long ago. The recipe says “grease two large six-cup popover pans” so I thought “perfect”. I had six of the paper cupcake holders for half the recipe. What I failed to realize is that mine were not as big in volume as a popover pan. The rest of the recipe that I’d glossed over said “or place liners in two standard 12-cup muffin tins.” Aha, that would'‘ve been 24 regular sized cupcakes. My first clue. I soon discovered that my liners fell somewhere in between. No problem, I would use the extra batter to make a handful of mini cupcakes and watch the baking time very carefully.
However, I apparently filled the larger cupcakes too full and ended up with batter falling up and out over the edges onto luckily the baking sheet below (not the bottom of my oven). No problem, I ate those chewy bits of cake before they even cooled. The bigger issue was that the cupcakes didn’t want to bake all the way. Rather than 16-22 minutes … I feel like it was 27 or 28 minutes minimum before they were done, and they did not look pretty. Moral of the story: Buy the dang popover pan!
These are my minis looking cozy on a wintry day.
The good news
The cupcakes, regardless of my dilemma, tasted divine and felt festive. I think I did an okay job trimming the tops off and covering up my mistake with buttercream. On a positive note, I had some mini bite-sized ones to enjoy along with my salvaged full-sized ones with an “almost” impressive height and lovely straight sides. BTW, I read on Nordic Ware’s description of its popover pan: “Vents between wells allow maximum airflow, so popovers reach their full height.” Hmm, my papers didn’t have vents.
In any case, my freezer is now home to cardamom buttercream frosting saved for a rainy day.
Perfect, because that’s the day I’m buying that popover pan.
Sharing my tree showing off its pinkish-orange bark in the 2/22/22 snowfall.