Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes

The other half laughs at me; I apparently go through phases when it comes to chocolate. I have a handful of favourites of which I alternate between, usually focusing on each one for a couple of months before moving onto the next. January through April it will be Mini Eggs, the rest of the year it is between Wispa Gold, Cadbury Lu and Crunchie. Right now, I’m having a bit of a love affair with caramel so Wispa Gold is the winner as well as the inspiration behind these Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for caramel, always opting for the caramel choices in life – ice cream, desserts, chocolate, even porridge! But for whatever reason I hadn’t actually tried making caramel. I’d heard that you could easily make a caramel sauce, known as Dulce de Leche from a simple tin of Condensed Milk but never realised just how easy it was. You literally simmer the tin in some water (unopened) for a few hours and boom, perfect caramel sauce. And boy-oh-boy, does it taste good! I was honestly eating spoonfuls of the stuff whilst making these cupcakes.

Here is the How to Make Ducle de Leche instructions I used.

For arguments sake lets forget about the fact that Dulce de Leche is technically not caramel and just appreciate how sickly sweet these Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes can be. Chocolate sponge, loaded with “caramel”, topped with butter cream and a good drizzling of caramel to finish. Can you get cavities from just looking at a cupcake?

Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes

Print Rate

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Author: Baking with Granny

Ingredients 

For the Cupcakes

• 100 g Plain Flour
• 20 g Cocoa Powder
• 140 g Caster Sugar
• 1½ tsp Baking Powder
• Pinch of Salt
• 40 g Unsalted Butter at room temperature
• 120 ml Whole Milk
• 1 Egg at room temperature
• 1 tin of Dulce De Leche

For the Icing

• 300 g Butter at room temperature
• 150 g Icing Sugar
• Few spoonfuls of Ducle De Leche

Instructions

For the Cupcakes

• Pre-heat your oven to 170°c (150°c for fan-assisted oven or Gas Mark 3) and line a muffin tray with nine cupcake cases.
• Sift the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder & salt into a large bowl and add the butter. Mix together until you get a sandy consistency.
• In a separate bowl whisk the egg & milk before gradually adding it to the flour mixture, a little at a time.
• Once both mixture are just combined, use an ice cream scoop to fill the cases 2/3 full, ensuring the batter is distributed between the cases evenly.
• Bake for 20 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
• Once cool enough to touch, transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
• When completely cool, hollow out a small circle from the top of the cupcakes with a sharp knife. Spoon/pipe in enough Ducle de Leche to fill.

For the Icing

• Mix the butter and icing sugar together until light and fluffy. Add a good spoonful of your Dulce de Leche/caramel (optional but really tasty).
• Spread or pipe the icing on top of the cupcakes, covering the caramel filled hole also.
• Drizzle some more Ducle de Leche on top to finish.

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