Salted Caramel Cupcakes

After extensively scrolling through the internet for a good salted caramel cupcakes recipe and I was coming up short. This was not because a lack of recipes - there are hundreds out there but I didn't find one that I liked so I was left with only option; make my own.

For these cupcakes I used:

For the cake

150g golden caster sugar
150g butter
3eggs
175g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla essence

For the icing

100g  butter
200g golden icing
50g philadelphia

For the caramel

125g butter
125g golden caster sugar
1 tsp double cream (optional)
A pinch of salt

In most cake recipes, well if you are using the creaming method anyway, the first thing you will do with your ingredients is to cream the butter and sugar until they are light and fluffy but I wanted to make caramel ones so instead of creaming the two I melted them instead.  (For added saltiness to the caramel I could have added an additional handful of salt at this stage.) Once I was happy with the consistency of my caramel I removed the pan from the heat and left to cool.

Meanwhile I did a little dance and sung into down my hairbrush while the caramel cooled.

After singing along to MTV for a few songs I was satisfied with the temperature of the caramel and proceeded to beat in the eggs…one by one…..careful not to get any shell in. At this point the mixture looked very runny but fear not because this why I added more flour than the other ingredients. Yet before folding the flour trying to incorporate as much air as possible I incorporated the baking powder and vanilla essence.

The mixture was then divided equally (well I tried to make them equal but it didn't really work) between 12 muffin cases and baked at 180 degrees for approximately 17 minutes.

With stage one complete I moved onto making the caramel filling and icing.

For the caramel I melted more butter and sugar with some salt yet feeling a tad adventurous I also added a little double cream thus making my caramel a little thicker and more fudge like. In the same way as butterfly buns I cut a groove into the top of the cupcakes before filling the space with the salted caramel and placing the piece of cake on top like a hat.

I used golden icing sugar for my icing as not only does it have a nice golden tint to it (as the name suggests) but also because the icing has a subtle caramel flavour to it. 

For the best effect I should have piped the icing onto the cakes but I have come to realisation that piping really isn't my my forte so I used the trusty spoon and knife method.

 Finally I decorated using honeycomb and butterscotch pieces. Eh voila scrummy cupcakes!

Carrot cupcake fail

My adventures in baking have often led me to trying out substitutes to the traditional ingredients such as using different types of flours (einkorn,spelt, gluten free etc) or dates instead of butter. 

This time the main ingredient that I was replacing was sugar but seeing as I was replacing one thing I thought that I might as well go the whole hog so my dear readers I present to you; 

Sugar free, gluten free, saturated-fat free carrot and pecan cupcakes. 

Well they would have been if I hadn't had the urge to ice them. 

The recipe I used can be found here. Only I used wheat free flour instead of almond.

http://eatthecookie.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/carrot-cake-cupcakes/

My mother made a stir fry last week (bare with me this story does relate) and instead of using rice like normal people would she decided that it would be far more nutritional to use shredded cauliflower. Alas (and I have no idea why...) a lot of this cauliflower did not get eaten so it was banished to the depths of the fridge. 

There it lay slowly festering and seeping into the other foods and quite frankly stinking to high heaven. Remember this little tale because we shall be deviating it in a few paragraphs time.  

For the icing I made a simple cream cheese butter icing using golden icing sugar. The golden sugar in this icing gives off a slightly caramel flavour and your icing will be lightly golden. 

I first mixed the icing sugar in with melted butter to make a smooth butter icing before adding a table spoonful of cream cheese -  does something smell a bit funky to you? 

 As it turned out the cream cheese had fallen victim to the great cauliflower invasion  yet I didn't realise that this was the case until  after I had already decorated the cupcakes. 

Anyone for a carrot cupcake with cauliflower icing?