Cupcake Wars (Part 3)

Remember the lime and goat cheese cupcakes I made in December?  The ones I made after challenging my sister to make them immediately after our original family Cupcake Wars competition in September?  She'd declined at the time.  But when I posted my lime and goat cheese cupcakes on Facebook, Kari had the following response:

"Oh. Yuck. Seriously doubt I could've eaten a cupcake with chunks of goat cheese (which I really hate). I'll do my best to turn in my cupcake at Christmas. But, please be assured--I WILL be taking the easy way out with some cream cheese..."

Yea!  I love when friends and family play along with my silly competitions and experiments. True to her word, Kari brought these to our family Christmas celebration:  

 

First, a few things about Kari.  She doesn't really like lime (or any citrus).  She doesn't like a lot of types of cheese.  She doesn't do a lot of baking.  And, she was almost 8 months pregnant at Christmas.  (Only a few more weeks until I meet my first niece!)  Put all that together and I am super impressed that she made these lime and cheese cupcakes!  

But how did they taste?  Totally amazing!  She made the BEST lime curd I've ever had.  She added lime to a cream cheese frosting and it was delicious.  I LOVED these cupcakes.  Thanks for playing along, Kari!  

 

So why did I wait until mid-January to share cupcakes from Christmas?  As you recall, my mom had promised to make pineapple and grape jelly cupcakes.  I wanted to be able to share those in the same post.  She made a pineapple cake filled with grape jelly and topped with a grape jelly frosting.    

The pineapple cake was moist and tasty, but did not taste very strongly of pineapple.  The grape jelly filling was just odd.  The frosting was a bit too sweet, although the grape jelly taste did come through.  So, not nearly as successful as Kari's lime and cheese cupcakes, though I really appreciate the effort.

Mom brought along some unfrosted and unfilled pineapple cupcakes so that I could experiment with fillings and frostings.  After a few attempts, I didn't come up with anything that really worked.  Starting with commercial grape jelly really limits the options, since the texture, sweetness and amount of grape flavor are already established.  Maybe someday I'll try baking grape jelly into the cake just to see what happens.....