Millionaire Cupcakes
Maybe you’ve heard of Millionaire Pie? My mom used to make it when I was a kid, and I always remember it being delicious. If you’ve never had it, it’s a no bake pie made with whipped topping, pineapple, and maraschino cherries in a graham cracker crust. I’ve been wanting to do a cupcake inspired by these flavors, and with a little help from my mom, I finally did. (Thanks for the recipe, mom!)
When Dylan and I went to the store today to pick out a beer to go in these cupcakes, we weren’t quite sure what we were going to use. Then we found a beer called Mana Wheat, from the Maui Brewing Company. It’s a wheat beer and it’s brewed with pineapple juice! I can’t see there being another beer that would be better suited for this cake. The beer is light bodied with a crisp pineapple taste to it, and not in an overpowering, or overly sweet kind of way. I’ve got another can in the refrigerator waiting for me, it’d be perfect on a bright sunny day.
The cake is basically a yellow cake with crushed pineapple added to it (and beer, of course). The crushed pineapple keeps the cake moist, and I think the beer flavor comes through really nicely in this one. My original plan for the frosting was to make the pie filling, like my mom used to make. Since we’re going to be offering samples of this cake tomorrow evening at the foodie tweetup (are you going?), I wanted a frosting that wouldn’t melt after being out of the refrigerator for a short time, like a whipped topping might do. I used a cream cheese frosting instead, and flavored it with pineapple juice. It turned out delicious! After frosting a bunch of mini cupcakes, and a few full size ones, each is topped off with a dusting of graham cracker crumbs and half a maraschino cherry.
(On a tasty side note, there was leftover frosting and I may have eaten a spoonful or two covered in graham cracker crumbs. It tastes like cheesecake.)
We are looking forward to seeing you at Launchpad on Monday evening for the tweetup! We won’t be there right at 5 pm when it starts (have to work the day job until 5 pm), but we’ll see you soon after.
– Jackie & Dylan
Secrets Revealed!
Just what you’ve all been waiting for, a recipe! Since the Coconut Porter Pineapple cupcakes are fresh on my mind (and fresh off my plate), that’s the recipe secret I’m going to give out. I’m going to go with the sans-pineapple filling part since I didn’t really master that yet. Check it out:
Coconut Porter Pineapple cupcakes
Yield: About 2 dozen cupcakes, maybe a little more
Cake Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups butter (or margarine), room temperature
- 3 cups white sugar
- 5 large eggs
- 1/2 cup flavored beer (I used a coconut porter)
- 1/2 cup pineapple juice
- 3 cups flour
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees, put cupcake liners in cupcake pan.
- Beat butter with electric mixer until creamy. Add sugar gradually, 1 cup at a time and blend well.
- Add eggs 1 at a time and mix well between each addition.
- Combine 1/2 cup pineapple juice and 1/2 flavored beer in a small bowl or measuring cup. (If you don’t have pineapple juice, you could just use a full cup of beer) Set aside to be used in next step.
- Add flour to butter mixture alternating with beer/pineapple juice mixture. Begin and end with flour.
- Stir in vanilla extract, for added coconut flavor in the batter you could add 1 tsp coconut extract, but not necessary. I added coconut flakes in the frosting to get more of the coconut flavor to come out.
- Scoop batter into cupcake papers by 1/3 cup. Batter should fill cupcake paper about 2/3 of the way.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes, let rest in pan a few minutes before removing to cool.
What’s that? You want to put frosting on them too? Okay, here’s my favorite cream cheese frosting mix:
Cream Cheese Frosting
Frosting Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup butter or margarine, soft
- 8 oz. package cream cheese (I often use fat free to spare me the extra calories, haha!)
- 4+ cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- (optional) 1 travel sized bottle of coconut rum
Directions:
- Cream butter and cream cheese together with an electric mixer.
- Add powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time and blend well in between additions.
- Add vanilla & coconut rum, blend well. Add more powdered sugar until desired consistency is achieved.
- Frost cupcakes when cooled. If you want coconut flakes, spread a bunch out on a plate and dip your freshly frosted cupcake into the flakes, they will stick to it beautifully!
- Enjoy!
And there you have it. If you do make these, please come back and leave me a comment about how they turned out for you! I’d love to hear it. If you can’t find a coconut porter like the one Maui Brewing Company makes, you could substitute with some other fun flavor of beer… be creative! Of course you could make these without the beer, but what fun is that?
– Jackie
Sweet and Stout 