The Gluten Bigot: Happy Valentine's Day

With pearls. I think they look so lovely!

Purchased at Sur La Table

Okay, well maybe not entirely paleo, but the base and most of the frosting is! Last weekend I had a wander around Sur La Table as there is one close to where I live and I completely had cabin fever otherwise. I needed a cutting board, and a bit of scope creep later I had a bag full o' goodies, including this adorable Paris inspired cupcake liners I thought would be precious for Valentine's Day cupcakes. Plus my husband and I have an upcoming trip to Paris so I thought it was quite fitting as well.

So obviously I just needed to make cupcakes. I was going to make one of my usual recipes, but decided instead to find a paleo recipe using coconut flour which I did here. They looked so lovely in the photographs and the recipe sounded good so I used it as the basis and made it my own:

1/2 rounded cup coconut flour
4 lg eggs
4 tbsp egg whites
1/3 cup organic raw cane sugar
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lavendar extract
1/2 tsp baking soda

As with all my favorite recipes, dump ingredients into a bowl and mix well with hand mixer. Put the cups into your muffin pan, and then fill using an ice cream scoop (an even scoop without excess yielded me 12 cupcakes). Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or so. Let cool completely.

Icing / Frosting (Paleo!):

I found this recipe for paleo cream cheese frosting (yah I just said paleo cream cheese frosting). I made half the recipe and subbed 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and 1/2 tsp lavendar extract for the vanilla. I will not leave you in suspense it was delicious.

Fondant (not paleo):

I really wanted to make this batch my fanciest batch of cupcakes yet, so I decided to try making fondant to use on top. I found this recipe for uncooked fondant and decided to make it. I halved the recipe as I really just wanted to make a few hearts to place on top.

Decorative:

I bought an WIlton's icing color in rose to make half my icing and my fondant bright pink. Mind yourself with this stuff, it will dye your hands and you will need to do some good scrubbing to get it out. I also used Wilton's white sugar pearl sprinkles on half my cupcakes. Note on both of these: neither contains gluten ingredients but do bare the possibility of being made on the same equipment as item that contain wheat, so use with caution if you're intolerant or celiac (I've not had a problem with either, doesn't mean you won't or I won't in future). Omit these things if you want to keep them paleo.

The fondant I colored and cut some pieces into hearts. The remainder is in my fridge until I figure out what to do with it. The other half I dyed the icing and then carefully decorated with pearls. See below for cupcake-food-porn shots.