I recently saw on Flickr that the divine Miss Sue has been making cupcake towers out of vinyl records. How awesome! But I was so sad to read that she says she says she sucks at making cupcakes, because really, they’re so easy to make! I make cupcakes all the time, so I thought I would share my super top secret recipe for Piña Colada cupcakes.
These ones are a sinister green colour because I made them for the first birthday of my favourite cafe Green Land, but you can make them any colour you want. Here’s how:
- Get yourself a box of vanilla cake mix. You can use your brand of choice, but I have a personal preference for Betty Crocker.
- Make the batter according to the box. Drain approximately half the juice of out of a can of crushed pineapple or pineapple chunks, and either save it for drinking or throw it away. Add all the fruit and the remaining juice to the batter. Add in a cup of desiccated or shredded coconut. Stir it all well.
- Put the batter into muffin tins lined with paper/foil cases. If your local supermarket only has boring paper cases, check out your nearest $2 store or Spotlight for more interesting ones.
- Bake for about 15 minutes at 180 degrees.
- Toast some shredded coconut either under the grill or in a nonstick frypan. You can tell it’s toasted when it starts to smell lovely. If you want to replicate grass, add a couple of drops of food colouring.
- Your cake mix may have come with a packet of icing – if so, make this according to the directions. You’ll probably want more than it’s given you though, so add in extra icing sugar, soft butter, and also a spoonful of rum for flavour. Feel free to add food colouring at this stage if that’s how you roll.
- Slather the icing on top of the cupcakes and sprinkle with toasted coconut. Decorate how you see fit. In the photo pictured I used “Happy Birthday” confetti from the Dollar Save Store. They have all kinds of awesome stuff there.
- Share the cupcakes with good people. Enjoy!
BTW, Sue made the cupcake towers on Good Morning today. Instructions are here, and you can watch video of Sue making them: retro cupcake tower, elegant cupcake tower.
Not only are they really easy to make, but you can pick up all the parts really cheaply. I want to have one of these on my desk at work to turn boring old lunch into an ladylike tea party.
I love Sue’s videos, they make me happy like a panda!
I saw this on Good Morning too, a great idea. Specially when you have lots of vinyl records of dubious merit like I do.
I saw another nice idea for a cupcake tower in my fave mag, the Sunday Times style. It used cool vintage plates and a candleholder. You just glue the plate to the top of the candleholder.