Pineapple Coconut Cupcakes

I posted about these cupcakes before on my personal blog... but they are definitely worthy of sharing again.  When my husband and I taught Sunday school, one of our students brought in some pineapple cupcakes she made all by herself. I was definitely a little hesitant... I don't generally like chunks of fruit in my cake. It usually turns out tough, dry, and nasty.  And that's just wrong. 

But I was pleasantly surprised! I ultimately ended up getting the recipe from her and trying them myself.  I love coconut so I added some hearty sprinkles of the shredded joy onto the tops of my cupcakes but if you don't like coconut- never fear!  They are definitely delicious either way.

DIRECTIONS:

Take a regular white cake box mix. (I suppose you could use yellow but I thought the white was a nicer contrast with the pineapple.) Make it regularly, but dumping in a regular size can of CRUSHED pineapple- juice and all! I cut back some (not all!) of the water needed because the pineapple juice will make your mix pretty runny.) Line a cupcake tin with papers, fill each nearly TO THE TOP. Bake as instructed. Frost, dust with coconut- enjoy!

You can use chunks of pineapple instead, but I preferred a kind of pineapple presence throughout the cupcake rather than catching huge chunks here and there. I just thought it would be too overwhelming. (and Christmas fruit-cake like. yuck.)

My first batch, I sprayed the cupcake papers with PAM, and when I took them out- the paper literally fell off each cake. Not ideal for when you're going to be serving them to a bunch of cubscouts who may or may not have washed their hands beforehand. haha (even without the papers, the cakes were incredibly moist and some of the papers didn't stick too well as you can see from my picture)

I also only filled each paper half way (as per instructions on the box) but for some reason with the pineapple, the mix doesn't seem to like rising, so I literally had half-empty cupcakes when I was done. These ones turned out much better. 

These cupcakes have my baking wheels turning with all sorts of ideas.  I feel like the pineapple platform lends itself to all sorts of glorious toppings. Cherries anyone?!

In the end, these are mouth-wateringly good.  Bake with caution- one will not be enough! They are moist and heavy so your belly may get the "I'm full" message a little late; after your mouth has already indulged beyond it's boundaries. You can justify it though... I mean you ARE eating fruit after all right?