Caramel fail

I was inspired by a comment left on this blog to try a caramel apple recipe. I thought that an apple cupcake with a salted caramel frosting sounded superb, so I had some free time and off to baking I went! The apple cupcake was a little different (I mean, come on, there are actual apples inside the cake!), but it was smelling fantastic coming from my oven so I gave it the benefit of the doubt.

While the cupcakes were baking, I started the frosting. With it being a salted caramel frosting, you kind of need caramel and I've never made caramel before. Ever. But I thought "How hard can this be?!" Let's just say, it was an...experience. It was pretty fun to make though because it felt like a science experiment!

So here we go...Round 1! I melted down the sugar and it never actually boiled, so it got pretty dark before a mental red flag went off. I took it off the heat and added the butter and half & half within 2 minutes of taking it off the heat. It bubbled and steamed just like it was supposed to and as soon as I added the sea salt and attempted to mix it, all hope was lost. The sugar had hardened and was like a rock in the middle of the pan.

Ok, so maybe I burned the sugar...Round 2! I hovered over that pot, mixing and mixing and when it was a pretty amber color (significantly lighter than the first time), I took it off the heat and this time immediately added the butter and half & half. Bubbles, steam, hardened sugar.

Now if you've ever made caramel before, you know it is not the quickest process. With my 2 kids running around, I was quickly running out of time! So Plan B. I went and bought some caramel squares and melted them down with half & half. I added some sea salt, butter and powdered sugar and wah-lah! We had some "salted caramel frosting".

First words out of my mouth after tasting (atop a divine apple cupcake) "WOW! That is sweet!". We ended up throwing the entire bowl of frosting away, it was so incredibly sweet and didn't work at all.
So I'm thinking maybe a cinnamon cream cheese would be an awesome compliment to the apple cupcake. But my question is, what's the deal with the homemade caramel? Where did I go amiss?

More cupcakes

I wanted to update with a few more pictures. I've been busy, busy the past few weeks with orders and I'm loving it! I haven't tried any new flavors lately aside from the pumpkin, which is quickly becoming a personal favorite.

Graveyard cupcake:



I was asked to make some cupcakes with a breast cancer awareness theme. I found these liners at a local cake shop and just thought they were adorable! My favorite part is that a portion of the cost of the liners is donated to breast cancer awareness research.

This just might be the most delicious apple ever :)

Fun

 Yesterday I had some free time, so I decided to try a pumpkin cupcake recipe. Sure enough, the smells in my kitchen were pure amazing-ness. The batter had that beautiful pumpkin pie color

And the smell! I wish I could bottle it up and upload it onto this blog because it was so enticing! They turned out beautifully and tasted as good as they smelled. I used a cream cheese frosting and it was a perfect compliment to the pumpkin.

So of course, I had to decorate them and with the current season we are in, what better way to decorate than Fall/Halloween?

This candy corn one is I think my favorite:

 Even though the mummy is pretty darn cute, too.

 Pumpkin:

 The ghost didn't turn out so well, but the concept is there. I just need to work on my execution!

So I had fun making them and my family and friends most definitely enjoyed eating them!

Girly

I know I say this every time I make cupcakes, but I was SO excited about the cupcakes I was asked to make last weekend. I think the theme had a lot to do with it...hot pink and zebra. Can you get any more girly and fabulous than that?! I made 1 dozen chocolate in hot pink liners and 1 dozen vanilla in zebra striped liners.

I love these liners! They are just so stinkin' cute! Anyways, I wasn't able to do everything I wanted with them because I had a shoulder injury, but they were still pretty fantastic. I need to get the pictures and post them, but the zebra lined cupcakes had hot pink frosting with a white chocolate "J" (for the girls first name) and the hot pink lined cupcakes had white frosting with white and black glitter....*sigh* Boy did I love making these cupcakes!