Aloha!

I see a theme emerging recently... After I made De Lime in De Coconut truffles, I moved straight into another use for coconuts. This time round I was asked to make cupcakes with a Hawaiian theme for a going away party. My friend, who asked me to make the cupcakes, sent me a few photos of Hawaiian cupcakes that she'd found online, which all gave me ample inspiration. I wanted to make everything brightly coloured and to really evoke the beachy feeling one gets when your thinking of Hawaii. The cupcakes themselves were decorated like a little beach with blue icing and graham cracker "sand", and on top of each cupcake I placed a piece of fondant that I moulded into various Hawaiian-themed shapes like surf boards, flip flops and hibiscus flowers. Underneath all this bright fondant was good sized portion of coconut cake! I couldn't actually make Hawaiian themed cupcakes and not have a tropical-flavour for the cake. Thanks to Anna Olson, I found a lovely recipe for coconut cake and I'm definitely going to make that one again!

Once everything came together and I saw all the cupcakes together, I felt really proud. Hopefully someday I'll get to a do a Hawaiian themed birthday party for one of my distant future children.