June 28th - part 3, Chocolate Salted-Caramel Cupcakes

Boy, I had high hopes for these. I found the recipe in the new Martha Stewart Cupcake cookbook, 'cept I didn't want to use her chocolate cupcake recipe, and I didn't want to use her salted caramel recipe - but was super excited about her "Dark Chocolate frosting" recipe.

WELL....for the cupcakes I used Field of Cakes dark chocolate recipe (which I adapted slightly, as it is so similar to my Devils Food cupcake), I used the salted caramels that I had made previously and melted them down with more cream for the filling and then used Martha's frosting.

End result: the cupcakes with the filling were fabulous, I ate 1 1/2 before I had frosted them. But then I put the frosting on (without really trying the frosting first....shame on me) and UGH. All you could taste was that blasted frosting. Which I guess is good, but just way overpowered the whole effect I was shooting for. I drizzled some more caramel on top and put some Fleur de Sel on top, but still all you can taste was that frosting.

Moral of the story: very good cupcake, find a different frosting.

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Dutch process cocoa)
1 1/2 cups white sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup cooled, strong coffee
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).In a large bowl, stir together the flour, 3/4 cup cocoa powder, sugars, baking soda, baking powder and salt.Make a well in the center and pour in the eggs, coffee, creamer and oil. Stir just until blended. Spoon the batter into the prepared cups, dividing evenly.Bake in the preheated oven until the tops spring back when lightly pressed, about 20 minutes. Cool in the pan set over a wire rack. So, what I did differently was to heat up the coffee, mix everything together minus the coffee for 2 minutes, then add the heated coffee...this is to bring out the flavor of the cocoa.

Salted Caramel Filling

from Baking Obsession

6 oz salted caramel (from previous post)

3 Tbsp cream

microwave together on med for 1 - 11/2 minutes, stirring every 30 minutes.

I'm not going to post Martha's recipe, as I will not make it again, and I don't recommend it.

Bake cupcakes, let cool. Either put filling in pastry bag and pipe into cupcake (which I attempted to do initially and it just made a huge mess) or cut a hole out of the center of each cupcake (I used an apple corer, which works wonderfully) and fill with a teaspoon of filling, the put cores back in cupcake. Frost, then drizzle with caramel and sprinkle with some more Fleur de Sel.