Salted caramel cupcakes

To celebrate my recent engagement (hurrah!) I of course took cakes into work. I decided to make 3 different flavours of cupcakes because there would then be something that hopefully everyone would like, not that my work as ever turned down any cake. Ever.

I made white chocolate and raspberry, the recipe can be found here, snickers, which I will post in a few days and salted caramel.

I'll start with the salted caramel. I used a caramel cupcake recipe by the hummingbird bakery. To convert it to salted caramel I simply gently warmed my caramel, from a tin, and added sea salt until it had that yummy salted caramel taste. I was not convinced the caramel in the cake would have much flavour (and I still think that I was right on this) so I hollowed out the middle after baking and added a generous spoonful of the caramel.

On the top is my version of salted caramel butter cream, a drizzle of more slated caramel and some chopped up caramel buttons. The ones I used were from silver spoon and I found them in the baking isle at the supermarket.

Salted caramel cupcakes

makes 16

for the cake

80g butter
250g golden caster sugar
240g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
240ml whole milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla paste/extract
tin of carnation caramel
sea salt to taste

for the frosting

150g butter
375g icing sugar
2 tablespoons whole milk
leftover caramel (from cake ingredients)
caramel drops (optional)

Preheat the oven to 190C/170C FAN and line two cupcake trays with liners. If you only have one, like me, simply bake the cakes in two batches, mine turned out fine. 

Pour all the caramel from the tin into a saucepan and gently heat while stirring. Add sea salt to taste. Make sure the caramel is warm enough to dissolve the salt but it does not need to be hot. Set aside to cool.

Whisk the butter, sugar, flour and baking powder together until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. Whisk the eggs milk and vanilla together in a jug.

Pour about 3/4 of the wet ingredients into the dry and beat until they are incorporated and the batter is thick. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the remaining dry ingredients and 150g of your salted caramel. Beat again until the batter is smooth.

Divide the batter evenly between the cases. Fill your cases no more than 2/3 full, these cupcakes really do grow!

Bake for ~20 minutes util golden and springy. If you are baking more than one tray swap them around halfway through baking. Once baked transfer the cakes to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the frosting beat the butter, icing sugar and milk together for ~5 minutes until very light and fluffy. Add 100g of the salted caramel and beat to combine.

Once cool remove a cone from each cake and fill with the leftover caramel. Place the cone back, trimming to fit. Pipe the frosting onto the cakes however you like. Finish by topping the cakes with caramel drops and a drizzle of any remaining caramel.

These cakes certainly look pretty, they were the ones catching peoples eye at work and everyone said that they enjoyed them.