My first try at these Thai-inspired cupcakes involved:
– taking a standard buttercream recipe and swapping the milk for fresh lime juice and adding some lime zest
– taking a standard vanilla cake recipe and removing the vanilla and swapping 1/4 cup of milk for 1/4 cup of lime juice and adding some zest
I then topped the frosted cupcakes with toasted, unsweetened coconut that I tossed in some granulated sugar.
All in all the cupcakes tasted pretty good, but I found them for one too sweet and secondly tasting mostly of lime and not so much of coconut. I plan to mess with the recipe some and see if I can’t get at something a little less cloying. For one, I plan to substitute most of the milk with coconut milk and plan on getting some fresh coconut in there somewhere.
More pictures of the cupcakes are here.