Lei Time

Just thought I’d say hi with a few Aloha Cupcakes.

Hi there. Hello. Howdy. How ya doing?

These are Pineapple Mango Cupcakes. All tropical like. With graham cracker crumbs for sand and fondant flowers for the leis. They’d be super cute for a luau party. They’re really pretty easy to make once you have all the pieces and parts.

First start with some cupcakes. Any cupcakes. But if you want to try the ones I made, here’s the recipe.

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Yield: two dozen cupcakes

Pineapple Cupcakes with Mango Frosting

Ingredients

Pineapple Cupcakes

• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1-1/2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup milk, room temperature
• 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple, drained and pureed*

Mango Frosting

• 1-2 Mangoes
• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 lb box of confectioners' sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line cupcake tray with 24 paper liners.
2. Pineapple Cupcakes: Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixer for several minutes. Add the eggs one at a time scraping down the sides of the bowl with each addition. Add the vanilla and mix until combined.
4. Add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture in three additions with the milk in two additions (flour, milk, flour, milk, flour) Mix until combined with each addition
5. Add the pineapple and mix until combined.
6. Fill cups about 2/3 full and bake for about 15 minutes.
7. Mango Frosting: Cut mangoes. Instructions here. Place mango pieces in food processor and puree enough so you have about 1/3 cup.
8. Beat butter and vanilla until creamy. Add confectioner's sugar in several additions. beating until well combined with each addition.
9. Add 1/2 cup of mango puree and beat until completely combined. Spread frosting on cooled cupcakes.

Notes

* I pureed the pineapple in a food processor. I'm not a big fan of fruit chunks. Flavor yes. Chunks. Not so much.

So that’s the cupcakes. But what about the fun stuff. Who’s ready to play?

Okay, fondant first.

You’ll need some to make these lovely little leis.

You’ll need:

Fondant
Icing colors
Toothpicks
Powdered sugar
Wooden skewers
String or twine

Oh… and a Flower Plunger.

Break off a small amount of fondant. Dip your toothpick into the icing color of your choice and wipe it on your fondant. Begin kneading it to incorporate the color… but not all the way. Sprinkle a little powdered sugar on your work surface and rolling pin.

Then roll out the fondant evenly and pretty thin. By not kneading the color completely into the fondant, you’ll get these marbled looking streaks.

Then use the flower plunger. Cut the shapes along the color variations to make flowers that appear to vary in shade.

Repeat with a few other colors if you like.

White works, too.

The flower plunger cuts the shape and also creates an indention in the center of the flower when you press down.

Then you can use wooden skewers to pierce through the center easily. Slide flowers on the skewers and let dry. Make these the day before so the fondant has time to dry out a little. I let them rest on a baking sheet overnight. Just make sure they aren’t pressed together tightly on the skewer or they will dry attached to each other and be difficult to separate without breaking the little flowers.

When they are dry, slide about 50 flowers (depending on the thickness) on a string about 12 inches long and tie a knot.

That’s it.

But what about the cute Aloha signs?

When the cupcakes are cool and frosted, dip them in a bowl of finely ground/crushed graham cracker crumbs.

Sorry, forgot the photo for this one. But you get the idea.

Then make your signs. Just kidding.

I made it easy for you with these…

You’ll also need:

Wooden cookie sticks
X-acto Knife
Scissors

Cut the cookie sticks down in size. Mine were about 12 inches long so I cut them down to pieces about 4 inches.

Print out the tags on heavyweight paper and cut them out individually. Then use an x-acto blade to cut two slits along the diagonal on each side of the tag.

Slip the sticks through the paper and then insert the sticks straight down into the center of the cupcake.

Like so.

When I first planned these out in my head, I thought they leis would be super cute draped over the signs. But in practice, they worked out better laying around the sign and on the sand.

Hope you like em!

Aloha and … Bye for now.