Samoa cupcake adventure

We had a list of sorts this past week over her Spring break... just me and her and fun things to do.
We would go outside, walk the dogs, shop, chill out and laugh,  have lunch at Panera, eat Dairy Queen--all the fun things an 11 year could think of to do. I knew that there was an especially important item on the list of to do's--make Samoa cupcakes!!
My online friend Jenny featured these Samoa cupcakes by the Sugar Duchess.
Thursday we tackled those cupacakes!!
The night before I did make homemade chocolate sauce since I did not have any on hand.
I would recommend this highly. Easy, cheap and well worth your time.

First of all, I am NO baking aficionado by any means.
I don't bake a lot mostly because I don't particularly enjoy baking.
BUT I am a pretty good cook and can decipher/ tweak recipes to my liking.
I will tell you that after having made these cupcakes once, there will be some tweaking
if we ever make them again.

What would I do differently?
* I would probably not use the icing. I would either omit it entirely or use a different recipe.
For us, the icing completely overpowers the chocolate cupcake. After making our initial iced cupcakes, we actually went back and scraped the icing off of some cupcakes, made holes in the top of the cake, drizzled more chocolate sauce on top to soak in and covered them with lots of toasted coconut and more chocolate drizzle. For us, this was a more pleasing taste. The icing in the recipe is very sugary and rich--I LOVE icing, so this was pretty major for me.
The chocolate cake and coconut got lost in the icing.
*** (Then,  I found myself asking if we watch too many episodes of Cupcake Wars on Food Network!!) ;)***

* Make sure the coconut is toasted. It isn't specified on the recipe, but I knew that it needed that flavor and crunch that toasted coconut brings. Incidentally, I made a little too much of that stuff and it is quite yummy to snack on. ;)

*Make sure your butter is unsalted. Luckily, I know enough about baking that unsalted butter is normally used and that is what I had on hand, but if you didn't know that, well...you could end up
with salty cupcakes. Just a tip because it wasn't specified on the recipe either!!

* Give yourself enough time!!! I can't stress this enough. I thought I would be a smarty pants and do a bunch of housework like scrubbing my floors and doing laundry. 
DON'T DO IT!!!!!!
I found myself not enjoying the process quite as much and being a little stressed in the process.  Another glitch that I couldn't control was having an electric stove top at this house--I have always cooked on gas and found myself talking to the stove saying, "How do I know this is med or low or simmer???" I thought I had lost my ever-loving mind!!! :D
By the time we got to decorating the cupcakes I was OK, but I really regretted not giving them
(and her) my full attention. Your morning, your afternoon, your evening, whatever...just don't attempt to multitask like I did. Also, making the icing the night before would be a time saver as well if you choose to make it.
At the end of the day, I was completely whooped!!


our next cupcake attempt will be Nutella cupacakes that Jenny posted about just today!!

I feel like having done an official batch of cupcakes for the first time has been a learning experience and the littlest and I should have a fun summer ahead of us baking together!! :)
and that is what matters most.

happy, Friday friends!!
xo