Piña Colada Cupcakes

Light, fluffy cupcakes, flavoured with lime and pineapple, topped with coconut buttercream, decorated with a pineapple wedge and a glacé cherry. 

Who doesn’t love the creamy deliciousness of a piña colada? Well it’s even better when all those tropical flavours are in a cake!

While deciding that to make with my pineapple and lime jam, it struck me that with just a bit of coconut, I would have all the flavours of a piña colada in a cake! So I decided to make some piña colada flavoured cupcakes.

I knew they would be tasty, but I didn’t expect them to be this good! They are definitely some of the best cupcakes I have ever made, so I really recommend this recipe!

Variations:

If you don’t want to make the jam, you could use some chopped fresh pineapple, and lime juice and zest to flavour the cupcakes instead. Replace the jam with 150g caster sugar, the zest and juice of 2 limes, and a few tbsp of fresh pineapple.

These are non alcoholic cakes, but you could brush the top of the sponge with sow rum or malibu, before icing, to give them a bit of a kick!

Ingredients: Makes 16 cupcakes

The Sponge:

• 150g Butter
• 100g Caster Sugar
• 200g Pineapple and lime jam
• 2 Eggs
• 150g Self Raising Flour

The Butter Cream:

• 100g Coconut Cream
• 350g Icing Sugar

Decorating:

• Chunks of fresh Pineapple
• Glacé Cherries
• 4tbsp Desiccated Coconut, toasted

To Make:

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a cupcake tray with cupcake cases.

Cream together the butter and sugar, until light and fluffy, then add the pineapple and lime jam. Add the eggs one at a time, then fold in the flour.

Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, until 2/3 full. Bake in the preheated oven for 12 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through.

Leave to cool on a wire rack before icing.

The Buttercream:

Beat the coconut cream and icing sugar together with an electric whisk, until light and creamy – you need to get it quite a bit thicker than normal buttercream, as the coconut cream melts much more easily than butter.

Stir in a few tbsp of dedicated coconut.

Spoon the buttercream into a piping bag with a star shaped nozzle, and pipe a swirl of icing onto each cupcake.

Decorating:

Top each cupcake with a glacé cherry and a wedge of pineapple. Then sprinkle over some desiccated coconut.

Serve (with a fork!) and enjoy the tropical bliss!