Pina Coloda Cupcakes

So my girlie CP and I were tempted to create our own version of a Pina Colada cupcake after we tasted the ones made @ Milwaukee Cupcake Company (which, by the way, are awesome. Sorry H and K, you guys should have called me in advanced and I would have happily got the Lady Gaga cupcakes for you). Anyway, so on one of our many girls' weekends we hit Whole Foods and got all the ingredients to make Pina Colada cupcakes following the Coconut Rum Cupcake recipe from the How Sweet It Is blog. We did make a few changes for instance we used brown sugar instead of white (because that's what we had in the kitchen) and unsweetened coconut. We also sweetened our frosting with maple syrup (maybe because CP and I are Canadian we just love that maple syrup). So anyway they turned out yummy yummy in our tummy. Not too sweet, but not so alcohol-y either (but oh HUNNY, that Malibu tasted oh so fresh and so clean). I think our next cupcake experiment is going to be in the peanut butter category...

Pina Colada Cupcakes (adapted from the Coconut Rum recipe)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon coconut extract
1.5 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup Malibu rum
Preheat the oven to 359 degrees. In a bowl, cream the butter, sugar and eggs until it becomes white and fluffy. Add the vanilla and coconut extracts and mix them well. Mix the dry ingredients separately and slowly add half to the wet mixture, combining the dry to the wet 1 cup at a time. Add the coconut milk and then the rest of the dry ingredients. Make sure it is all combined. Add the rum and shredded coconut. Pour the batter into a cupcake tray and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
When the cupcakes are cooling make the frosting. We decided to take a separate approach to the frosting from that in the original recipe. We went ahead and made a cream cheese frosting. In a mixing bowl we combined one package of cream cheese softened with 1/2 cup of maple syrup, 1/4 cup Malibu and 1 tablespoon vanilla. When it was all mixed I put it in a plastic baggie and did my best to pipette it on top of each cupcake while CP sprinkled coconut on top. Et voila!