Finals - German Chocolate Cupcakes - World Cup Eating Challenge

I just want to start out and apologize this post is so late after the World Cup finished! Excuses suck but I was really sick last week and it was a struggle just to do normal work and chores without having to also figure out how to write words and sound interesting. This week I'm pretty distracted by Comicon planning but if I don't write this post now, I never will.

---

I had pretty ambitious plans for Germany. I had thought of ways to do schnitzel and spatzle in a paleo fashion and I'd seen tons of paleo German chocolate cupcake recipes. However, when my plans for the final four settled and I saw I'd be doing Germany the same day I was going to a BBQ, I knew I'd have to reorganize a bit.

The cupcakes would still be a great thing to make for a BBQ. Spatzle sadly wouldn't travel well and is hard to eat/ serve at a BBQ so I skipped that idea. I decided I'd start my cupcakes Saturday night and in the morning I could frost cupcakes while frying schnitzel . I had great plans for a productive morning. I was going to wake up early, go for a 4 mile run, frost cupcakes, make schnitzel , pick up some wine from a wine club and get to the party half an hour before the game started. I woke up an hour late, making frosting takes forever, and it was already 11:30 before we were out the door without schnitzel or running. I'm terrible at figuring how much time it takes to do things.

The good news is the cupcakes were awesome so here goes...

The most important step to making cupcakes is getting your cupcake liners set up. I ordered a bunch of different colored liners from Amazon. This was kind of perfect because I doubt I'll have much use for the red so I was able to use a bunch on these cupcakes. I also probably didn't need to be so precise about alternating the colors since I'm the only one that saw this part but hey, wasn't it pretty?

Now that I had my colored liners in a row, it was time to mix my ingredients. I actually found a ton of Paleo German Chocolate cake/cupcake recipes which was awesome. Paleo baking is pretty easy as there are a lot of alternative flours and sweetners as well as allergen free chocolates. The hard part is frosting. I personally have had some failed attempts with whipping coconut cream frosting but German Chocolate uses a frosting made of pecans and coconut (all paleo) so it naturally lends itself better to being adapted in a paleo version.

I ended up picking this recipe, mostly because it was the prettiest. 

The instructions for these cupcakes were a little more involved than a lot of the other paleo baking I've done. There were a lot of steps that I hadn't had to do for any other recipe and the cupcakes on the surface looked a lot tastier than some of the other things I'd made. I think the creator of them did a great job of making a complicated process straightforward and I wasn't confused at any point on how to execute them all. I ended up doubling the recipe so I could have two dozen cupcakes and it was easy to do that after I'd already started which was nice. 

The next morning (when I woke up to not run or make schnitzel), I started working on the frosting. German Chocolate cake was always one of my favorite things growing up. That says a lot since I really don't like chocolate cake very much. However, I love coconut and so anything covered in coconut pecan caramel can't be bad. Making paleo caramel is pretty fun. I've never made the real stuff but it basically just uses coconut milk and coconut sugar cooked on the stove until it turns into awesome caramely goodness. It looks and smells amazing during the whole process and while it's kind of time consuming, I really like watching the ingredients completely transform before my eyes. 

The next step was to put it all together. Once my caramel was ready and had cooled down, I added the pecans and coconut. I realized my frosting wasn't nearly as pretty as the pictures. I think my coconut was shredded a lot finer so it soaked up more of the caramel and it turned out to be chunkier than the ones from the recipe. 

They tasted awesome though!! As I'd mentioned above, the process to make them was much more involved than other paleo baking I'd done. It really paid off. These were the most moist (sorry to people who hate that word) cupcakes I've ever made, paleo or not. I liked that the use of paleo ingredients lightened up the sweetness of them. Anything bursting with chocolate and sugar and caramel can easily be overly sweet and I'm happy that using the paleo alternatives leveled that out more.

I did have a little bit of a rant at the end of it all though. I took 20 cupcakes to the bbq... and came home with 16. There was definitely a comment thrown out suggesting that things don't taste as good because they are paleo and it's had me really frustrated for the whole week and a half since. Paleo or not - it drives me crazy when people won't even try something. How do you know that they don't taste good if you don't don't give them a shot? The few people who tried them all had great things to say. Dan and I were able to bring a bunch for co-workers who loved them as well. It kind of breaks my heart that I went through a lot of effort to make these and was really excited that the last thing I made for my challenge could be shared with a wider audience... and that excitement was crushed.

I was already planning on doing a post about paleo and my eating lifestyle choices so that's still coming. I do just want to say that this choice for me has been a huge factor in helping my health, lifestyle, and happiness. People think it's just some fad diet but it's really a choice to eat more fresh food, to know where your meals are coming from, and to put things in your body that it can process easier. Paleo cupcakes definitely aren't the healthiest thing in the world but they're better than crap filled with refined sugar and chemicals that you can't even pronounce. I don't want to tell anyone how to live their life or what dietary choices to make. I don't expect everyone to read this or try something I make and decide to do paleo. It's not easy and it's not for everyone, but it would be nice if you were open to other points of view. To assume something tastes bad because it's healthier or organic or unprocessed is just so closed minded. 

I don't mean to rant or complain but it's something that's had me upset for some time. The good part of it though? I still had one cupcake left yesterday and it was the best way to reward myself after my two hour workout.