Almond Salted Caramel Cupcakes
The first time I made these cupcakes was because my roommate, Preetha convinced me to sign up for the Graduate students cupcake competition. This was my first year and I had just started baking. In fact until I came to the US, I had never really much of an interaction with ovens. Baking 40 perfect cupcakes on a night’s notice was daunting as hell. I’m a bit of a planner and the lack of time to plan this one really threw me off. The only thing I knew was that I was going to do something with salted caramel. The sauce was one of my first experiments and it is the easiest to make. Check the recipe for the salted caramel sauce here.
By next morning, I had decided to make almond cupcakes with salted caramel frosting, but it was only after I opened my pantry did I realise that I didn’t have any almond extract. So slight change, vanilla cupcakes with salted caramel frosting. As I had no experience, I followed the instructions to the ‘T’ and ended up with the lightest, most amazingly moist cupcakes ever. I almost said “Screw the competition, I’ll eat all of them on my own and I won’t even need milk to wash them down.”
The frosting was simple enough, melted butter, icing sugar, and salted caramel. I topped this with a few sprinkles of sea salt (don’t you love sea salt. I got myself a pretty bottle that I sometimes open the cupboard and admire,) and named my cupcakes ‘The Ancient Mariner’ as just the mention of sea salt reminded of the poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.
Recently, I baked these cupcakes again for my colleague at the library to thank her for all her help, except this time decided to add almond flour (as I had some left from my macron experiments). Oh lord, did it make my cupcakes moist. It felt like I was swallowing clouds or was it cotton candy? Either way, my greedy side reared its ugly head and once again I wanted to keep all the cupcakes to myself. It took a lot of willpower to put them in the box and took a lot more physical power to keep them from the clutches of my roommates.
The trick to a good cupcake is how you mix the butter and sugar in the beginning. It has to be creamy and be at least 1.5 times its original volume. The more light you make it, the more fluffy your cupcake becomes because of all the air that you are incorporating in there. Now you can substitute the butter with margarine. No, no- don’t knock it till you have tried it. It does make it more moist and you need moist, else you are stuck with a mouthful of sand. Another way to make them moist is, like I said before, to use almond flour. This recipe calls for 1 ½ cups of flour, so you can substitute that ½ cup of flour with almond flour. BOOM! Flavour and moisture. Ok, who’s tired of the word moist and wants to start baking?
Light, fluffy, dreamy almond cupcakes with a simple buttercream frosting, but wait that's not all of it. Enter the decadent salted caramel sauce which makes everything better and all the problems disappear.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line your cupcake tray with paper liners.
Sift the flour and baking powder together and leave it aside.
In a big bowl, cream butter and sugar till it looks nice and light. I whisk with my hand and feel that this can be achieved in 5-7 minutes of whisking.
Next comes those eggs, one at a time. Mix well between them to make sure it is blended well with the butter and sugar. Having the eggs at room temperature will help you with this.
Stir in the vanilla and almond extract.
Gradually beat in the flour mixture, alternating with the milk (start and end with the flour). The right consistency is when your batter flows down from the spatula like a ribbon.
Spoon the batter 2/3rd full in the liner and bake for 20-25 mins. Do the toothpick check. If the inserted toothpick comes out clean, you are golden.
Take ‘em out and leave them to cool down.
Beat the salted butter with 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed. When it comes to the sugar, I rather err on the side of using less than more, so I always add mine in small increments. Keep adding the sugar till it reaches a thick consistency, close to dough.
Add the vanilla extract.
Lower the speed and slowly incorporate the salted caramel, one spoon at a time. Save some to drizzle on the top.
Pipe the buttercream over the cupcakes only once they have completely cooled down. Drizzle leftover caramel sauce on top and sprinkle a few grains of sea salt to contrast.
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line your cupcake tray with paper liners.
Sift the flour and baking powder together and leave it aside.
In a big bowl, cream butter and sugar till it looks nice and light. I whisk with my hand and feel that this can be achieved in 5-7 minutes of whisking.
Next comes those eggs, one at a time. Mix well between them to make sure it is blended well with the butter and sugar. Having the eggs at room temperature will help you with this.
Stir in the vanilla and almond extract.
Gradually beat in the flour mixture, alternating with the milk (start and end with the flour). The right consistency is when your batter flows down from the spatula like a ribbon.
Spoon the batter 2/3rd full in the liner and bake for 20-25 mins. Do the toothpick check. If the inserted toothpick comes out clean, you are golden.
Take ‘em out and leave them to cool down.
Beat the salted butter with 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed. When it comes to the sugar, I rather err on the side of using less than more, so I always add mine in small increments. Keep adding the sugar till it reaches a thick consistency, close to dough.
Add the vanilla extract.
Lower the speed and slowly incorporate the salted caramel, one spoon at a time. Save some to drizzle on the top.
Pipe the buttercream over the cupcakes only once they have completely cooled down. Drizzle leftover caramel sauce on top and sprinkle a few grains of sea salt to contrast.