Graham-Coconut Cupcakes: or, Just use a full-size cake pan. They're better.

Now that most of our neighbors have burned off their fireworks stashes, how was everyone's Fourth of July?

Everyone in our neighborhood was slightly more restrained with their fireworks this year than last. We only had a slight haze in the air. Last year, we had an honest-to-God London fog. You could only see about two or three blocks ahead in the smoke. The fireworks were a constant earsplitting crackle well into the night, and the stink of burning metal seeped into the house even though I remembered to shut the door. I know it was a miracle the entire county didn't go up in flames (there's a lot of dry grass at this time of year), but I missed the exuberance this year.

For this fourth of July, I wanted to introduce everyone to the absolute delight that is graham cracker cake. Then I decided to eliminate the hassle of paper plates and plastic forks by making cupcakes instead. That is how I learned that not every cake recipe makes good cupcakes.

Because I grew up in the nineties, I had to dye the icing turquoise. (Turqouise was everywhere in the nineties, whether it was the color of your entire car or just the logo on your normal-colored T-shirt.) I didn't realize until too late that I had color-matched the mixing bowl.

So many of my friends' parents had bathrooms in this color.

 The icing came out exactly as I planned, but the cupcakes were not so great. You know how I wrote in the original recipe that it really likes to stick to the pan? Well in this case it stuck to the paper no matter how carefully you tried to peel it off. You couldn't remove the paper without ripping away huge chunks of cake.

Even if you extracted the cupcake intact(ish), the batter seems to need a large pan to bake right. These were a little gummy and just a smidge on the wrong side of underwhelming. But at least they looked cute!

Happy belated independence day, everyone!