Easter Joy (Cupcake Style)

Easter is my favorite holiday. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentine's Day - they can all be fraught with some baggage for people, heavy with the weight of family or personal history. There are gifts to buy, big plans to be made, and family politics to navigate. The big holidays, they're during the cold winter months, involve much travel and schlepping of food and gifts. Valentine's Day? Eh. A Hallmark holiday to be borne. But Easter? Oh, EASTER! It's easy. It brings chocolate and SPRING! As a little girl, I always got a new Easter dress, usually in some pastel color. Easter is fun and light - all about kids, sweets, and the shaking off of winter. (And, yes, I realize it means waaaay more to some folks - just not to this girl.)

While I no longer receive an Easter basket (though let's remedy this, yes?) or new pastel dress, I still love the holiday dearly. So this year I hosted a little dinner for gf friends at my place. I did the fairly traditional roasted dinner, i.e. pork, potatoes, and asparagus. But I was really excited about dessert. Growing up, the church my family went to always had one of those coconut lamb cakes after Easter service. I wasn't able to whip out a lamb mold, but I did get my cupcake on:

Cute AND delicious

Won't lie: Betty Crocker helped me in the kitchen. I was an excellent baker in the BC (before celiac) days, but have yet to get the from-scratch gf baking itch; I'm perfectly happy to use mixes at this point. I just added sweetened shredded coconut to the mix, made a cream cheese frosting, and rolled the frosted cakes in more coconut. (Left a few cakes plain vanilla, like the guy on the left, in case others didn't share my coconut nostalgia.) The cakes, they were a hit. Tradition renewed, gf style!