Raspberry and Coconut Cupcakes

I was recently bought a cupcake book by my boyfriend and it is amazing. It is by Cupcake Jemma off of youtube, I'm always watching her videos coming up with new ideas to cook. I definitely recommend checking out her videos. 

So with this recipe there are three parts to it, first the raspberry sauce, the cupcake itself and then the buttercream icing on top. 

Ingredients

Fruit Sauce
400g Raspberries
110g Caster Sugar
Lemon (optional)

Cupcake
120g Desiccated Coconut
250g Self-raising Flour 
250g Sugar
1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda 
250g Butter
4 Eggs
3 tbsp Milk 
3 tbsp Fruit sauce 

Buttercream
300g Butter
675g Icing Sugar
5 tbsp Coconut Cream
5 tbsp Desiccated Coconut (for topping)


Method

So to begin with you need to make your raspberry sauce or as it is called in the book fruit goo. I already had raspberries in my freezer (I had a bit less than 400g but it made no difference to the making of the sauce). You need to measure out your sugar and raspberries and put them into a sauce on a medium heat for about 10 minutes. Make sure you stir the sauce now and then so the raspberries break down and it does not start sticking to the saucepan. At the end of the 10 minutes your sauce should be of a thick consistency, if not the leave it on the heat until the consistency is just right. So after this you want to take it off the heat and sieve it straight away to get the seeds out of your sauce. 

Next onto the cupcakes themselves.

So begin by placing 120g of desiccated coconut onto a baking tray and place it in the oven for 5 minutes at 170c. While the coconut is browning you can begin by creaming the butter and sugar together either with a wooden spoon or a hand mixer. You can then add half the flour, the bicarb and 2 eggs making sure it is mixed together well. Then you can add the rest of the flour,the last egg,milk and the coconut. Mix this for about 2 minutes. You can then spoon 3 tbsp of fruit sauce into your bowl and mix a little bit so it makes a swirl effect.  

Next fill the cupcake cases 3/4 of the way and place in the oven for 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow to cool on a cooling rack until they have completely cooled down.

While the cupcakes are cooling down you can begin to make the buttercream.Place the butter in a bowl and beat for at least 4 minutes, preferably with a hand mixer. Next add half of the icing sugar and careful mix this until it has just come together. Then add the other half of your icing sugar and your coconut cream. Beat this for 2 minutes and your buttercream is then complete. 

So now is the fun part, piping the buttercream onto the cupcake and then dipping it in the coconut to give this effect.  

If you do not own a piping bag then just use an ordinary freezer bag, place all of the buttercream into a corner of the bag and cut off the corner of your bag. There you have it, your makeshift piping bag. 

Here is the finished product. I'm not going to lie, it is one of the most fanciest cupcakes I have made. I am so used to sticking to plain, basic cupcakes but this was actually successful so I think I will be trying a lot of different recipes from now on. 
I hope you enjoyed following this :).