Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcakes

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A friend of mine mentioned that her birthday is Monday so I immediately thought, “I need to make her cupcakes!” I asked her favorite flavors and she said chocolate and salted caramel. I was then on a mission to find a delicious chocolate salted caramel cupcake recipe. During my search I came across a recipe for chocolate salted caramel cupcakes at 20something Cupakes. Well, if this wasn’t perfect, then I don’t know what is!

I found the recipe on Thursday, which meant I had to wait until Sunday to bake the cupcakes- talk about torture! I couldn’t wait to bake these things!! I was also VERY excited to make caramel sauce from scratch.

So today, after a restless sleep because I was so excited (yes, I’m serious…it’s the little things in life, right?) I gathered all the ingredients and set to work creating the cupcakes.

I followed all the recipes exactly and was NOT disappointed in my results!

Some helpful tips:
-When I made the cake batter it turned out very thin. Don’t worry- this is how it is supposed to be! I filled the cups about 2/3 of the way full, like the recipe says, and the cupcakes came out perfect!
-You don’t need to cut down too far in the cupcake to make the hole for the caramel. Mine looked like this:
-I was slightly worried about making the caramel sauce- I wanted it to be perfect! If you follow the recipe, it will be delicious. The secret is patience. I wasn’t sure my sauce would ever reach 360 degrees, but it did! Here are some pictures of the progress of my caramel, but watch the video at 20something Cupcakes– it’s super helpful!!

The sauce is at about 250 degrees here.

It is at about 355 degrees at this point.

This is after I took it off the heat, added the cream, and the salt.

-When filling the cupcakes, put one teaspoon of caramel in each cupcake first. The caramel will settle a little- go back through and add a little more to fill up the hole you created. This is what mine looked like filled and with a little of the Fleur de Sel on top.

-My frosting was not super thick, but oh so good. I opted to keep it just how it was, even though it was a bit thinner than what I usually use. I didn’t want to change the flavor! I had my husband try the frosting…like I’ve mentioned, he’s not really that into sweet stuff, but when he tried this frosting he started licking the entire paddle! I guess he thought it was good too!

-I frosted my cupcakes and added the bit of salt…

And decided I would drizzle the little bit of caramel I had left on top of my cupcakes!

I’m so excited to share these delicious cupcakes with my friend for her birthday tomorrow- I hope she enjoys eating them as much as I enjoyed baking them!!

Baking love,
Heather