Almond Joy Cupcakes

My Dad's Birthday was this past weekend. So, cupcakes were
in order. His favorite cake is German Chocolate, that coconut
frosting. This year I decided it might be nice to change it up
a little. Almond Joy CUPCAKES........YUM.......!

I kinda punked out and used a box mix.
A really good box mix......

look at those delicious bits of vanilla bean, yum.
Use your favorite kind of white cake batter. Bake your cakes
and after they have cooled it's hole making time.

Take a drinking straw a poke holes into your
cakes. In a bowl mix one 14oz can of cream
of coconut and one 14oz can of sweetened
condensed milk. Fill a plastic squeeze bottle
with some of the coconut mixture.

Fill all the holes with the coconut mixture.
I only did this once but, you could fill
wait a while and give it another go around.

The cakes become so moist and heavy. Wanna peek inside??

M.O.I.S.T.

The frosting was super easy. I went with a
chocolate ganache.
Heat one cup of heavy cream to boil.
Turn off heat and add 9oz of chocolate.
I used semi-sweet chips from Trader Joe's.
I also added 1 teaspoon of pure almond extract.
Stir and stir and stir, until the mixture comes
together. Leaving you a smooth and velvety
pool of liquid chocolate. Place in the fridge
over a ice bath till cool. Mix the ganache
a few times while it's cooling.

Pipe the ganache on to the cakes. Sprinkle
them with toasted coconut and slivered
almonds.

This recipe yields 14 cakes and just enough frosting. I had
extra of the coconut mixture. So, if you plan on making these
try to find smaller size cans of the cream of coconut
and sweetened condensed milk.

My Dad has a "new" favorite Birthday cake!