Coconut Cupcakes - Barefoot Bloggers

I recently joined a group of bloggers that challenge each other to cook two new dishes each month. The recipes are all selected from Ina Garten - aka- The Barefoot Contessa. I thought that joining the group would help to push me out of my comfort zone in the kitchen and the incentive to try new dishes that I normally wouldn't pick myself.

I'm a big fan of the Food Network and one of my favorite shows on the channel is The Barefoot Contessa. Her Chicken Piccata is heaven on a plate. She lives in the Hamptons and her cooking style reflects her location. I so want to join her and Jeffery for a breakfast brunch on the beach.

So, back to the Barefoot Bloggers challenge. The first recipe chosen for February was Coconut Cupcakes. I'm not a big fan of coconut but I haven't given it an honest try in my adult years so I was looking forward to trying it again with an open mind.

The recipe for the cupcakes can be found here on the Food Network's website. The recipe has a five star rating, so I had high hopes for these cupcakes. However, seeing that the recipe calls for six sticks of butter made me a little disgusted at that thought of so much butter in just one batch of cupcakes. After all, this wasn't a Paula Deen recipe.

I ended up cutting the recipe in half and had enough batter to easily fill 16 cupcakes and way too much frosting.

I had a great helper in the kitchen that was using his toy mixer while I made the cupcake batter in my stand mixer. The recipe was easy to make and made less mess than the water that was spilled everywhere by the other cook in the kitchen.

The cupcakes themselves came out really well. They were springing, moist and light with a golden butter taste. I'm still not a big fan of coconut but it was a nice compliment to the cupcakes. I made half of the batch without the coconut and they came out just fine as well.

I wasn't a fan of the frosting. It was just much too sweet for my personal taste. My husband, however, was eating the leftover frosting by the spoonfuls.