Toffee bakewell cupcakes

The book for this months Cupcake book club, hosted by Kelly over at American cupcake in London, was Hot cakes by Kim Newman-Wood.

I am not entirely sure what to think of the book, It started off well enough and I was enjoying it. By the end though, I am not sure that I entirely liked any of the characters which was rather odd!

The cupcake recipes however sounded delicious. There was one that I had to make otherwise I think Mark would have kicked me out of the house and changed the locks. So I made the toffee bakewell cupcakes but there is perhaps one more I will make before the deadline for this month is up.

These cupcakes intrigued me. I often make cupcakes, and once they are baked, remove a cone and add a filling. This recipe however added the caramel to the centre of the cake before baking. I.e. half fill the case with batter, add a teaspoon of caramel, add the remaining batter to cover the caramel then bake. I could not help wondering would it work?

Answer, yes it did. Saying that, although I put the caramel in the centre, it definitely sank during baking, so I would maybe add the caramel two thirds of the way up to combat this.

The cake is an almond flavoured sponge with a caramel filling. I swirled almond and caramel buttercream over the top.

Its a little hard to tell but the buttercreams are different colours. I finally drizzled caramel on the top. For the caramel, you can make it using condensed milk, or carnation handily sell tins of ready made caramel now.