Why so many cupcakes lately? Because cupcakes are IN! Well that and, actually, when I moved to my temporary pad - I put most of my kitchen things in the storage except - my KitchenAid mixer, measuring cups and spoons, spatula, and muffin pan. So can't make cookies or cakes or pies or brownies or shit like that.

Got this idea of lemongrass cupcakes from Cupcake Bakeshop Blog but I'm going to make up my own a bit. I like the idea of filling cupcakes up with tapioca pudding. So I'm going to bake vanilla cupcakes, fill them with lemongrass tapioca pudding and attemp lemongrass creamcheese frosting. In case this doesn't work out, I still have good vanilla cupcakes....



Ingredients
Filling
2 stalks lemongrass
1/3 cup sugar
2 cups plain soymilk
1/4 cup small tapioca pearl

Cupcakes
2 sticks butter - room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 3/4 all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk

Frosting
really soft part of 3 lemongrass stalks - chopped very finely
1/2 cup plain soy milk
3 cups confectioner sugar
1 stick butter - room temperature
1 package creamcheese

Chopped peanuts for decoration

Directions
Filling
Heat all the ingredients in low heat until tapioca becomes clear - about 30 minutes.

Cupcakes
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pan with liners. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla extract. Alternately stir in dry ingredients and buttermilk in 3 batches. Drop the batter by tablespoon into prepared muffin pan - 3/4 full. Bake for 22 minutes. Make 28 cupcakes.

Frosting
Heat soy milk and chopped lemongrass in low heat for 20 minutes. Let cool. Beat butter and sugar with electric mixer. Add lemongrass soy milk. Add creamcheese. Beat until fluffy.

Assemble the cupcakes
When the cupcakes cool, with a small knife make a cone hole on top of cupcakes. Fill the hole with tapioca filling. Discard the triangle part of the cones and re-cap the cakes. Frost the cakes. Sprinkle chopped peanuts on top.



......

The frosting didn't come out that well.. I could hardly smell the lemongrass. The forsting is just like normal creamcheese frosting with weird brownish color. I came up with 2 possibilities why I couldn't bring out lemongrass smell:

1. Maybe soy milk doesn't have enough fat to bring out and retain the smell. According to the movie "Perfume" - they used oil to extract smell from things....

2. Maybe the soft inner part of lemongrass doesn't smell as strong as the outer tougher part.

Anyway - peanut sprinkle saved the cupcakes. They came out just like normal vanilla cupcakes. But with the peanut - they look and taste a little more exotic...

Tags: cupcakes