easter cupcakes - brown sugar pound cakes with browned butter cream cheese frosting

There are a couple things that led me to this combination of flavors for my easter cupcakes.  First, I've been drooling over various pictures of easter egg nests (see here and here), which made me to want to make cupcakes decorated with mini nests.  And second, I recently scarfed down a whole box of Samoas Girl Scout Cookies (it may or may not have been all by myself), and it reminded me how much I love the combination of coconut, chocolate, and caramel.  This led me to make these brown sugar cupcakes with browned butter cream cheese frosting (the caramel flavor component), decorated with chocolate-coconut easter egg nests.

The day before making the cupcakes, I assembled my coconut-chocolate nests.  I toasted some shredded coconut, then mixed it with melted chocolate.  I pressed the mixture into a mini cupcake pan, and pressed in my Cadbury chocolate eggs while the coconut-chocolate mixture was still warm.  Then I put the pan into the fridge so that I could easily pop the nests out after they had hardened.

The next day, I made the same brown sugar cupcakes as I did for my Thanksgiving cupcakes, but instead of topping it with the Bailey's frosting (somehow Bailey's and Easter just didn't seem to go together), I decided to pair it with the browned butter cream cheese frosting that I made for my Halloween cupcakes.

The cupcakes turned out moist and fluffy, with a slight caramely brown sugar flavor.  And it went perfectly with the browned butter cream cheese frosting.

I even had leftover batter, so I made a few mini cupcakes too.  Perfectly bite-sized for the kiddos!

Happy Easter!