Tropical Piña Colada Cupcakes

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 I wanted to bake cupcakes that would be a fun tropical experience and so these are a result of that! I decided to take inspiration from piña colada, a coconut-pineapple cocktail, arguably the most tropical thing I could think of (because that's the only drink I know). The cupcakes are soft coconut cupcakes with shredded pineapple and toasted coconut folded through them for that toothsome mouthfeel. I topped them off with pineapple chips and tanghulu dragon fruit. If you're not familiar with tanghulu, its basically dunking things into sugar syrup at a specific temperature so that you get a nice crunchy coating on the outside. I decided to do that with dragon fruit because its pretty bland anyways.




Initially, I envisioned a whole circular piece of a pineapple chip with dragon fruit on top of that, but the chips turned out a little to big, so I had to cut them in half. The result? A half and half design on the top, which doesn't look too bad either!

Piña Colada to Cupcakes

Makes 12 cupcakes:

  • 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp. desiccated coconut
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, soft
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp. coconut essence
  • 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 3/4 cup coconut milk
  • 1/2 cup pureed pineapple

Toast the coconut till golden brown. Allow to cool. Beat the butter and sugar till creamy and well combined. Add the egg and coconut essence and combine. Add the flour, baking powder and toasted coconut, followed by the coconut milk and pureed pineapple. Combine till a batter forms. Evenly distribute the batter in 12 cupcake liners kept in the muffin pan. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 20 minutes.

Pineapple chips:

  • 1/2 a pineapple

Remove the outer part of the pineapple. Thinly slice the pineapple into rings and arrange on a baking sheet in a pan. Bake the pineapple for about 25 minutes, along with the cupcakes.

Tanghulu dragon fruit:

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 dragon fruit

Slice the dragon fruit into little triangles. Combine the sugar and water in a pot and heat until the syrup reaches 150C. Simultaneously prepare an ice bath. Turn off the heat and skewer the dragon fruit. Dip the dragon fruit in the syrup and plunge into the ice bath.

To assemble:

Top the cupcakes with the pineapple chips followed by the tanghulu dragon fruit. Hard, right?




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Tea Traditions
Around the World


POST | KAHWA: KASHMIRI TEA

Let’s talk about tea

Whether it’s a whole ceremony at your home or a reason to argue over who is going to make it on weekend mornings, tea rules: it’s a universal beverage. The big drink.

Whenever I think of afternoon tea, or just tea in general, one of the first things that comes to my mind is a cup of milk tea surrounded by a table loaded with finger sandwiches, biscuits, scones, jam, cream and Victoria sponge cake; British tea. That’s what I think of tea as. But this visual could be different for you. You might think of masala chai from India, matcha tea ceremonies if you’re from Japan, the first time you drank çai on your visit to Turkey, some tea bags or just some soggy tea-drenched toast.

Whatever it is, tea is a huge tradition all over the world, and just like truth, it has different versions: British afternoon tea, Indian milk tea, Burmese laphet and Moroccan mint tea, to name a few.

What are some of your tea traditions?



Food for thought,

by food, for food.


A lot of my friends ask me where I get my ideas from. Many just assume that I’m a culinary genius and I pick ideas from my brain just as someone would go apple-picking. But that’s far from the truth. You do NOT know what other salt has fallen into my failed dishes.

I get all of my ideas from other food: cookbooks, recipes on Instagram and food blogs of chefs and MasterChef contestants (especially Beccy from Canada Season 5, Fred and Nick from US Season 10 and Suu from US Season 11) whom I admired in their seasons. Many of my findings act as a catalyst for new ideas or help me steer existing dishes in the right direction. Sometimes I’d just want to be a normal foodie and try other’s dishes because, well, I’m hungry. In short, food for my new ideas, by other chef’s food for MY food on this blog. Quite the analogy.


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