Project: Key Lime

It all started in the produce section of the grocery store. A 1 lb. bag of key limes for $2.99 caught my eye. I’ve always wanted to make a key lime pie from scratch and it just so happened we were going to visit my parents that coming weekend. My parents are huge key lime pie fans. If there is key lime pie on the menu at a restaurant, they are ordering it! This was the perfect time to experiment.

Not being familiar at all with key limes and seeing how tiny they were, I had no idea how many I would need to make a pie. So I bought 2 bags. Yeah. I wasn’t counting on those guys being so juicy. One little cherry tomato-sized key lime yielded ½ tablespoon juice. Way more than I expected! Plus, they are packed with so much flavor and a tartness that can’t be beat. I love key limes! I decided to make Key Lime Pie VI from allrecipes.com and it turns out I only needed about ¼ lb. to make that recipe. So, I had 1 ¾ lb. key limes left. What to do with them???

Key Lime Pie VI

First, I decided to make another top-rated key lime recipe from this site: Key Lime Cake II. That was fantastically lemony-limey deliciousness! I then decided to get a little creative and make up some of my own recipes. First up was booze, of course. I made a Key Lime Martini, which I’ve posted in my recipe box. Then the creative juices started to flow. I had a jar of coconut oil in the pantry that I bought and hadn’t used yet. There was my flavor combination: Key Lime Coconut. Now, how should I combine those two flavors? Being inspired by the new show on TLC “DC Cupcakes,” I decided on cupcakes! So there was my recipe: Key Lime Coconut Cupcakes.

Key Lime Cake II

Coconut oil is a popular item at the store I work at. It’s been getting a lot of flak recently because it is mostly saturated fat. However, it turns out coconut oil is very good for the heart because it contains lauric acid, which prevents high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Studies have shown that people living in tropical regions whose main cooking oil is coconut oil are healthier. Coconut oil is also very good for the skin, hair and digestion. Plus it tastes great! One of my coworkers loves to use it to pop popcorn in. I encourage you to do some research for yourself to see if coconut oil is a good choice for you. There are different varieties of coconut oil. Virgin, unrefined coconut oil has a coconut aroma and flavor, whereas refined coconut oil does not. I used virgin coconut oil in my cupcake recipe because I wanted the coconut flavor.

I did some research and found out that coconut oil can replace butter and shortening equally in baking. So I decided to try it and it worked! It gave the cupcakes just a hint of coconut flavor, but still let the key lime flavor shine through. I didn’t have a perfect product right off the bat, and it turns out I’m not that great at baking cakes from scratch. However, my cakes from box mixes are among the best! My first batch of cupcakes turned out dry and crumbly. I was worried that either the coconut oil wasn’t working or I didn’t have the right proportion of ingredients. It turns out that I’m just too fast and efficient in the kitchen and I just needed to slow down a bit. I found these helpful hints for a moist and tender cake: sift the flour, beat the fat and sugar well (this is the part I was skimping on), beat well again after adding the eggs, and don’t over mix after adding the dry ingredients. I followed these tips and low and behold – a moist tender cupcake that didn’t fall apart. Hooray! (‘Cause if that didn’t work, I might have given up on the whole project……I was getting frustrated at that point!)

Next came the frosting. I wanted to use a cream cheese frosting because it’s my favorite and I knew it would go well with the citrus and coconut. However, I didn’t know what would go best with the cupcake. Should I use coconut oil or butter? Key lime or vanilla? Or maybe some combination of the above? I made up four different frostings to taste test. I think I knew which one was the winner even before I frosted the cupcakes, since I couldn’t stop pinching tastes of it: the frosting made with coconut oil (instead of butter) with key lime juice. The only problem was the juice made the frosting too runny. The solution: replace part of the juice with zest. Bingo! I had my frosting.

The different frosting combinations I tried.

Taking a cue from my favorite celebrity chef Ina Garten’s (the Barefoot Contessa) coconut cupcakes, I topped the frosted cupcakes with sweetened flaked coconut. Only I like coconut toasted, and these cupcakes are all about what I like, so I toasted the coconut.

Taste-testing the cupcakes - someone had to do it!

I was so excited to follow my finalized recipe and have the cupcakes turn out so beautiful. Developing recipes is tough, but lots of fun, even more so when you have success! I hope you try out my recipe and let me know what you think. I think they are pretty darn good and can’t wait to make them for my friends and family.

The final recipe! Key Lime Coconut Cupcakes