I had such high hopes for this recipe, as I love vanilla beans and coconut  – and I was intrigued by the idea of reducing the coconut milk and adding it to the batter and the frosting!  I got the recipe here, from Epiciurious.com.

It was a bit labor intensive, with reducing the coconut milk and toasting the coconut as additional steps to making batter and frosting.  (Once again, I should remind you that I do not have a sweet tooth so my perspective might be a little different than yours.)    I expected to bite into a moist coconut dominantly flavored cupcake – there was coconut flavor, but not as much as I expected, and it wasn’t as dense and moist as I had hoped for (keep in mind that I undercook my cupcakes by at least 2 minutes because I hate dry cupcakes).  And I felt like the frosting was WAY too sweet.  Everyone else seemed to like them, but as for me, I prefer Martha Stewart’s Yellow Butter Cupcakes (made with vanilla bean).  Give those a try – and make sure not to overcook them:)

A little tip on vanilla beans, you can get them super cheap at Costco around the holidays – I always stock up for the year, otherwise they are so expensive.  I also use them in sugar cookies and caramels – which I’ll blog about a little later.