Mango Filled Coconut Cupcakes with Mango Buttercream

Posted on by BethMichelle on August 31st, 2011 | 44 Comments »

While everyone back on the east coast of the United States braced for falling trees from hurricane Irene, we here in southern Israel braced for falling rockets from the Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The first few weeks back from our most amazing summer backpacking through China have been a bit of a roller coaster due to all tension between Israel and Gaza. It all started with a terrorist attack in Eilat and escalated to us having to spend a lot of time in our ‘safe’ area. We were instructed by the homefront command to stay near fortified shelters and we really felt no need to go venturing out, especially the day where we had rockets every hour of the morning! Ack! Luckily for me I had already gone to the super and had a house filled with food. And luckily for my husband (and med school classmates) me being stuck at home for a few days meant baking!

August in Israel means mangos and my eyes lit up as I saw giant piles of them at the shuk. Looking all ripe and beautiful I bought a bounty of them. August in Israel may mean mangos but it also means sweltering heat and that means fruit goes bad pretty quickly. I stood in my kitchen starring at the 6 mangos I bought (yes, 6) realizing I may have been a little too excited about them. I made everything with mangos; fruit salad, spicy shrimp with mango salsa, salad with mango dressing and of course ate them plain. But, there were still more mangos in the fridge and I was not about to let them go to waste, even if I was a bit mangoed out. And so, taking my last 2 mangos I created these beauties; mango filled coconut cupcakes with mango buttercream.

The cupcakes were sent off to school with my husband and an hour later I got emails and facebook messages like; “Im so glad Im not married to you. I would have diabetes. Amazing cupcakes.” and “Mango frosting= BEST EVER”. In other words, these cupcakes are good, really good. A perfect end of summer for those of you heading into fall soon, and a perfect its still summer cupcake for those of you living in perpetual heat like me. Not only are they delicious but they are are so pretty and makes one forget all about hurricanes, power outages, falling trees and even rockets .

Ingredients

For Cupcakes:

2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup ground coconut (plus more for decorating)
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 tablespoons butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs

For Mango Filling:

1 cup heavy cream
1 mango, finely chopped

For Mango Buttercream:

12 tablespoons butter
1 mango, minced
4 cups (or more) powdered sugar

Directions

To make cupcakes, preheat oven to 350F and line 24 muffin cups with liners.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and ground coconut in a mixing bowl and set aside.
In a measuring cup combine coconut milk, oil and vanilla extract, set aside.
In a large mixing bowl beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Add eggs, one at a time to the butter/sugar mixture, beating well after each addition.
Add flour mixture and milk mixture in alternating batches, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and beat until combined.
Spoon batter into cupcake liners and bake for 20 minutes or until golden and toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

While the cupcakes are baking prepare the filling.
In a mixing bowl beat cream until whipped cream is formed, about 7 minutes.
Mix in the finely chopped mango and set aside.

While cupcakes are cooling, make mango buttercream.
In a mixing bowl cream together mango and butter.
Add powdered sugar slowly until everything is incorporated and smooth (add more powdered sugar if necessary to achieve the consistency desired) and set aside.

Once cupcakes are completely cooled, make a hole in the center of each cupcake using a plunger (an apple corer works wonders too!) reserving tops.
Pipe in mango cream to the center of each cupcake and return top to cupcake.