Tasty Little Treat

I love summer. It just leaves so much opportunity for baking the most delectable things, and all the ingredients are so fresh! I needed to make some cupcakes recently for my family, but I didn't want to make the traditional birthday cupcakes like they're used to. I knew there would be a lot of adults there, so I wanted a more "grown up" cupcake. So, off to my fellow foodie's blogs I ran! I found myself at Coconut & Lime with this recipe (http://coconutlime.blogspot.com/2007/01/cuba-libre-cupcakes.html) for Cuba Libre cupcakes. Brilliant!! Here's their recipe:

Ingredients:

-1 cup flour

-1 cup sugar

-1/2 cup coca cola

-1/2 cup butter

-1/4 cup milk

-3 tablespoons dutch processed cocoa

-2 tablespoons rum

-1 tablespoon lime juice

-1 teaspoon baking soda

-1 teaspoon baking powder

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1 egg

Directions:Preheat oven to 350. Line or grease and flour 1 12 cupcake cupcake pan. In a small saucepan, heat butter, coca cola and rum to boiling. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Mix together lime juice and milk in a small bowl* or measuring cup and set aside. Meanwhile, whisk together cocoa, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the cooled butter/coke mixture and beat until well combined. Add egg, beat then pour in the milk. Mix until combined. The batter will be rather thin. Fill each well 2/3 of the way full. Bake 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove cupcakes to wire racks as soon as possible to cool. Frost with Chocolate Rum Cream Cheese Frosting when cool. Garnish with a wedge of lime.
*This will sour the milk a bit. Do not worry if it looks slightly curdled.

Chocolate Rum Cream Cheese Frosting:

Ingredients

-1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

-4 oz cream cheese @ room temperature

-1 1/2 tbsp dutch processed cocoa

-1 tbsp good rum

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl until creamy and smooth. Use to frost cool cupcakes or cake.

I pretty much followed the recipe exactly as listed, but I added 1 tsp of my Pure Mexican Vanilla to the cupcakes, and 1/2 tsp of the vanilla to the frosting. I'm crazy about that vanilla right now, I want it in everything! But, I have to be careful, I don't want to run out too fast. Also, both recipes call for "good rum", but I'm pretty bad at recognizing what's good and what's bad, so I went with some stuff we bought in Mexico:

You can get Appleton White in the States, but we bought it there because we love it so much and wanted it for mixing drinks while we were there. Trouble was, we barely even mixed one drink out of it because we were too busy going out for dinner/drinks. Oh well, now I can use it at home!

One thing I did notice is that if you do want to use a lime garnish, slice a tiny slit in the cupcake so that it creates a little pocket for the lime wedge. Otherwise, you run the risk of the cupcake and frosting rejecting the lime and it falling off prior to serving, especially if you transport them in your car like I did. Here's a pic of my finished product:

Many thanks to Coconut & Lime for coming up with this yummy recipe! I just know I'm going to use it again, I've already gotten a couple requests from people at work for them.

~Mehgan~