When I was a little girl, my favourite colour was pink. Evidence of this can be found in the photo directly below. Please ignore the bad 80’s girl-mullet, however. *wince*

Note the overabundance of cabbage patch kids, the entirely pink outfit, pink curtains, pink miscellaneous, and just know that my bedding was a very pretty light pink as well. I loved pink.

When I got older and we moved houses and I got my own bedroom (the photo above shows me on my bed, which was the top bunk. My sister had the bottoneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comm bunk.) When I had my own bedroom, I told my parents I wanted pink walls and pink bedding and pink carpet and blah blah blah- pink. My proposal was immediately shut down. My parents were strictly white wall people, and the notion of the walls being any other colour than white, or possibly “eggshell” was unheard of. They also denied the remainder of my requests, siting my reaction as I grew older, saying that when I was 16, I’d not want a pink bedroom anymore.

I kept on, and despite a brief stopover in panda addiction, I remained a lover of all things pink. Finally my parents sent me off to church camp, and upon my return, they’d painted an “accent wall” bright pink, and given me pink area rugs for my bedroom. I was totally stoked.

Even when pink was no longer cool amongst girls my age, I loved pink.

Sure, I might have told everyone that my favourite colour was green, or blue, or black (Yeah, I went through that phase, too) It was always pink, and I loved the colour of my bedroom. I requested pink parties, pink clothes, pink everything. I even chose my favourite brand of shampoo and conditioner based on their pink colour, totally ignoring that they were watermelon scented, and I hated watermelon.

One of my favourite sweets, growing up, were snowballs. You know.. Hostess snack cakes. An inverted chocolate cupcake filled with cream, covered in a layer of marshmallow and then rolled in pink dyed dessicated coconut. My only problem was that I didn’t much like the chocolate cake, but I loved the idea of coconut on a cake. My mom started adding coconut to the birthday cakes that she made me, and one year she covered my entire birthday cake in a thick layer of pink dyed dessicated coconut, so that it looked like a giant snowball. I loved it. Had I made my own birthday cake this year, that is exactly what I would have done.

But instead I’ve decided to make pink hazelnut cupcakes, dip them in string icing and then roll the tops in pink dyed dessicated coconut. They’re amazingly delicious, too.

I felt like maybe I should have added something extra to the presentation of these cupcakes, but simplicity is best, I think. The cool thing is that the coconut ended up the exact same colour as the cupcakes themselves. The perfect shade of pink.

And now for the recipe!

Pink hazelnut and coconut cupcakes

1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons Hazelnut extract
1/2 cup fine ground hazelnuts
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons milk
2-3 drops pink food colouring

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). line a muffin pan with paper liners.
In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the flavouring and pink food colouring. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Stir in the milk until batter is smooth, then fold in the ground hazelnuts. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups.
For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch.

After you’ve allowed the cupcakes to cool, whip up a quick batch of string icing, which is just 3 tablespoons milk mixed with about a cup of powdered sugar. Make sure there are no lumps. Dip the tops of the cupcakes into the icing, allowing any icing drips to fall back into the bowl. Once iced, dip into a flat tin with a wide opening full of the prepared coloured coconut.

To tint your coconut, you’ll need dessicated coconut (available in most grocery store bulk sections) and a couple drops of food colouring. Put about a cup of coconut into a ziplock bag, and then add a drop of food colouring. Close the bag and smush it around until the colouring is fully dispersed. Add more food colouring as needed.

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 3:12 am and is filed under October 2007, The Cupcakes!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.