Pina-Colada cupcakes (with recipe)
My mother-in-law came to visit for her birthday a couple weekends ago. We had a great time with her in town and I got to show off my baking skills 🙂 I knew that she liked coconut cake but I wanted to kick it up a notch. I found a recipe for pina-colada cupcakes and thought they’d be perfect. I made a 1/2 batch which yielded 8 cupcakes for me.
These turned out AMAZING. Hubby says they’re definitely in the top 3 cupcakes I’ve ever made. I would agree with that. They were so light and fluffy and the coconut and pineapple flavors blended together perfectly.
Pina Colada Cupcakes – from Annie’s Eats
For the cupcakes (I halved this recipe to yield 8 cupcakes):
2 cups sifted cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
8 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk, at room temperature
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. coconut extract
4 egg whites
1/2-2/3 cup shredded coconut
For the frosting (I halved this recipe which was perfect for my 8 cupcakes):
2/3 cup fresh pineapple chunks
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 3/4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
For garnish:
shredded coconut
fresh pineapple wedges
Preheat oven to 350°. Line a muffin tin with paper liners.
In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat the butter on high speed until creamy, about 30 seconds. Gradually add the granulated sugar and continue beating, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl, until light and fluffy, 4 to 5 minutes.
Reduce the speed to low and fold in the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk and beginning and ending with the flour, until just blended. Stir in the vanilla and coconut extract. Stir in shredded coconut. Transfer batter to a large mixing bowl and set aside. Wash and thoroughly dry mixer bowl.
In the mixer bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Using a rubber spatula, fold ½ cup of the egg whites into the batter until smooth. Carefully fold in the remaining egg whites until smooth and blended. Divide the batter among the prepared wells.
Bake until the cupcakes are golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 15 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes. Remove the cupcakes from the pan and let cool on the rack to room temperature.
To make the frosting, puree the pineapple chunks in food processor or blender until smooth. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and butter on high speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Mix in powdered sugar until well combined. Add pineapple puree to achieve desired pineapple flavor (approximately ½ cup). If frosting is too runny, refrigerate for 30 minutes to allow to set up a bit. Frost cupcakes with pineapple frosting, sprinkle with shredded coconut and garnish with fresh pineapple wedges.
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
Raspberries are my very favorite food on the planet and this looks absolutely divine. Thanks for sharing this!
Its my husband birthday on Fri I might try to talk him into having this cake for it.
awesome work, Jen! It sounds delicious and looks gorgeous. I’m totally jealous of your border-piping skills too.
Beautiful cake! This is very similar to our wedding cake, I may just have to try it!
It looks beautiful and sounds delicious. I’ll have to try this one!
This looks absolutely terrific! Great job on the assembly and decoration!
really beautiful cake! and raspberries are one of my favorite fruits ever! i love the little sacs together with the crunchy seeds. hee.
Holy beautiful! this cake is quite elegant and delicious looking! I love raspberries with cake.
Jen this cake is so so beautiful! It reminds me of the triple berry cake from Sweet Lady Jane here in LA. If an opportunity every arises for me to make a layer cake (I have the same problem – it’s hard to find people to help finish it!) I will definitely try this one.
You did a beautiful job with the piping. Gorgeous.
We should be best friends hahaha. We have the same go-to white cake recipe, and we both made layered cakes this weekend! Your cake is BEAUTIFUL! You have every right to brag. You did an excellent job on the piping and decorating. It looks professional!
I added lemon extract to my strawberry frosting on my strawberry cake (which came from Bridget’s recipe), and I could taste hints of lemon. I think the extract and some lemon zest would work well.
I must make this cake!! I am 100% certain that I would like it because we have similar tastes.
Now I need to look at your overdose cake to compare it to my overload cake.
Lemon and raspberries sounds like a perfect flavor combo. Your cake looks beautiful!
OH wow, I started drooling as soon as I saw the pic. SO pretty and looks delish! Will def. have to try this one… 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
This is so, so pretty! And obviously looks delicious too. Raspberries are one of my favorite parts of spring!
Sues
I don’t think you’re bragging! I would be proud of a beautiful cake like this one.
Looks delicous!
http://www.brisbanebaker.blogspot.com
beautiful!! Great decorating job!
This cake looks awesome and my mouth is watering looking at the picture right now.
beautiful cake!
This cake is SO, SOOO beautiful! I love it!!!
Looks beautiful, I love layer cakes!
you say something about videos from youtube? can you share the the links?
vertigoxcured – I updated the post with links to the youtube videos. Sorry about that.
I made this for Mother’s Day and it was a huge hit! Thanks for sharing. I added the juice of the zested lemon and an extra cup of confectioners’ sugar to the buttercream and managed to get a nice lemony tang.
I cant believe this is your first frosting coated cake. So beautifully done. And also note…that 4 layers with fruit filling without cake sliding all over the place is not a normal for first timers in that department. Kudos… you got the cake decorating skills Ma’am.
am making this cake right now, and i must ask about the proportions of flour to liquid. it seems off. i made the recipe exactly as written and it was a pool of liquid. i had a similar recipe for a white cake which called for 2-3/4 flour and only 4 egg whites + 1 whole egg ( similar), so i added another 1/2 cup flour and it was still liquidy. it took 30 mins. to bake, not 23-25. will see how it turns out. the only good part is rubbing the grated lemon zest with the sugar, although i could not taste much lemon in the batter. by the looks of the layers, i would recommend 8″ pans as the layers are quite thin. all in all a big disappointment. glad i planned ahead and will make a different recipe.
beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:27 pm
Sorry to hear this recipe didn’t work out for you. This batter was very thin going in to the oven.
Does this cake keep well? i just made three 6″ cakes, which I’ll freeze in preparation for making a little layer cake on Sunday (a top-tier wedding cake replacement for our one year anniversary, after Hurricane Sandy ruined the real one.) But I also made two dozen cupcakes with the batter. I’m planning to bring one dozen to a dinner party tomorrow and the next dozen to a party on Wednesday. Any tips for the cupcakes? Should I freeze them, or just leave them out til I’m ready to frost? Would appreciate any suggestions! Thanks.
beantownbaker — April 23rd, 2013 @ 7:48 am
I haven’t made this cake into cupcakes before. But in general, cupcakes are fine for a couple days. If it’s more than 2-3 days, I’d go ahead and freeze them, then frost them the day before you want to serve them.
Would it be advantageous to whip the egg whites first, and fold them into the batter at the end? It might help with the thin batter issue, and I have some recipes for white cake that call for whites whipped into soft peaks. I am making this cake for a baby shower this weekend, so I will let you know how this technique works, unless the author has an opinion against.
beantownbaker — June 10th, 2013 @ 12:27 pm
I have made this cake, or a variation of the cake, multiple times as it is written without any issues. I know some cake recipes do have the cake whites whipped and folded in at the end. If you try it, please let me know how it goes.
If you could email me with a few pointers on how you made your blog site look this cool, I would be thankful!
Going to endeavor to make this for my husband’s birthday next weekend. I haven’t made a cake in ages, but I like challenges!!! Hopefully it will go well as his parents are coming into town for his birthday (yikes!) I hope it has a nice lemon flavor because he loves lemon. Wish me luck!!!
beantownbaker — September 27th, 2013 @ 3:54 pm
I hope he enjoys it. The cake definitely has a lemon flavor. If you wanted to go super lemony, you could use lemon curd instead of raspberry curd for the filling!
Cake looks beautiful. However, each cake was an only an inch thick so was confused how to possibly cut it in half to make four layers. So after everything was cleaned up, I had to make a second round of this. The puree was tasty and plenty of it. The Frosting was delicious and plenty also. The cake itself tasted good with hint of lemon, but did not rise much at all and it had a very rubbery texture and very dense. I agree the batter was thin when I poured in pans, but it was not fluffy and light by any means after it was baked. I appreciated making it, but not a fav for me.
I know this is an old post, but I had to comment after making it for the first time yesterday. This is a lovely cake! The only downside, for me, was that the lemon flavor was lighter than I thought it would be. I ended up topping it with some toasted almonds and fresh raspberries, and serving it with homemade coconut ice cream.
*Note: My layers came out quite thin. They were both only a little over an inch thick, and the batter itself was a slightly thick/fluffy consistency. That being said, I was able to torte them without difficulty and the finished cake came out to a little over 3 inches.