Chocolate-Coconut-Muffins with Fondant-Frangipani

Last weekend, I attended a Buddhist ceremony. The food at such ceremonies is usually wonderfully varied, and since my Dad was one of the main organizers, I wanted to bake something suitable. The emblem of Buddhism is actually the lotus flower, but in all the Buddhist temples I have ever seen, Frangipani also grow (they are called Aralia in Singhalese), which are also known as "Temple Flowers", precisely because they are planted in each temple. Unlike the lotus flowers, I could imagine to make Frangipani out of gelatin fondant, and that decided the decoration question! ;-)

Ingredients for 48 mini muffins and 5 muffins:
Twice the dough of the most first chocolate muffins, i.e.:
140 g neutral oil
420 ml milk 
2 eggs 
2 tsp vinegar 

400 g sugar 
2 tsp vanilla sugar or a little vanilla extract
600 g flour 
4 tsp baking powder 
2 tsp salt 
160 g cocoa 
150 g chocolate

For the coconut filling:
200 g cream cheese
200 g grated coconut
2 packs vanilla sugar

For the decorations:
200 g gelatin fondant , white
food coloring, yellow
ganache or chocolate

Energy: 146 kcal per mini muffin

Preparation:
Grease the mini muffin tin or cut 48 baking paper squares (3 baking paper sheets cut into 4x4 squares each), as none of my paper cases fit the mini muffin tin. 
Prepare the muffin dough, that is, mix the dry ingredients, then mix the liquid ingredients and stir the two together. Stir together the coconut filling.
Use two teaspoons to drop some muffin dough into the muffin tin. Since the dough was quite firm, I used a folded piece of parchment paper to flatten the dough into the tin, and added milk to the dough for the second round of mini muffins.

Use a teaspoon to scoop up some coconut filling, roll it into a ball with your hands and press it into the chocolate mixture in the muffin tin. 

Cover the coconut filling with chocolate muffin dough - on my first round, the dough was too tough, so I added some milk, such that the muffins in the second round had a smoother surface and covered all the coconut filling completely.

For the Frangipani blossoms, you'll need a drop-shaped cookie cutter (otherwise it takes you forever), I used the metal strip from the remainder of the lemming-shape cookie cutter. Roll out the gelatin fondant, cut out quite a lot of drop shapes, combine 5 petals to make a flower and a squeeze the petals together in the middle, overlapping slightly.

Use a wooden stick to make small dents in the petals and paint the middle with the yellow food coloring.

Pipe a small ring of ganache onto the muffins (not like for cupcakes, only to fix the flower), use a knife to place a flower on the ganache ring and press it down slightly. 
I've been told that I earned lots of good karma with these muffins  - I hope that's true! ;-) 
In any case, they were yummy!