Why This Recipe Works
The pairing of savory salt and sweet caramel is a hard one to resist. We wanted to create a cupcake that highlighted this combo, one that would be dressed up enough for any celebration. For caramel flavor in every bite, we started by giving our cupcakes a core of salted caramel sauce. We cooked the sauce until it was dark (but not burnt) for added complexity. And to ensure the sauce didn’t ooze out of the cupcakes at first bite, we added extra butter to help it set up.Since we were already putting in the effort to prepare a delicious homemade caramel sauce for the cupcakes, we decided to add it to our frosting as well for a double hit of caramel flavor. We started with an easy vanilla frosting as our base and then simply whipped in 1/4 cup of the caramel sauce. We like to pipe the frosting into swirls before drizzling it with more caramel sauce and sprinkling it with sea salt for an eye-catching topping. When taking the temperature of the caramel in steps 3 and 4, remove the pot from the heat and tilt the pan to one side. Use your thermometer to stir the caramel back and forth to equalize hot and cool spots, which will help ensure an accurate reading.
