Vanilla Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Filling & Salted Caramel Frosting

Posted by - Dixya @ Food, Pleasure, & Health

...if you have dirty dishes piled up, laundry that needs to be done ASAP, unread mail that needs to be opened, vacuuming, scrubbing and all that business Or, if you are an overachiever and have done all that (please come help me), fine don't- I like cleaning too but just not right now. Not today. 

If you are little overwhelmed like me, go run to your kitchen & surround yourself with heavy cream, flour, butter, sugar, sea salt and make a huge batch of salted caramel frosting, salted caramel filling and extra vanilla-y cupcakes and in the process pile up more dishes - what the hell you will be doing heck of a cleaning later anyways. The whole process is extremely therapeutic - it only takes a spoonful or two (but who's counting right) salted caramel frosting to calm this clean freak. I don't like when things are scattered here, there and everywhere but when I am not in the mood to clear the space I make candied salted caramel.. lets not clean today but shall we be creative, please? And eat all the cupcakes I want! 

Vanilla Cupcakes  
Makes about 6 cupcakes

Ingredients  
3/4 cups all-purpose flour 
1/2 tsp baking powder
dash of salt
3 tablespoon unsalted butter (softened)
1/2 cups sugar (add less if you like less sweeter taste)
1 large egg
1 Mexican vanilla bean (scrape with pairing knife)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Directions 
-Leave butter and eggs in a room temperature for an 1/2 hr or so
-Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
-In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder and salt together
-In KitchenAid Stand mixer (if using that) or a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then add egg to the mixture and continue beating it in medium speed then add vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste until everything is incorporated.
-Scrape the sides of a bowl
- Add flour and milk alternatively to the butter- sugar mixture and continue until everything is well combined.
-Divide batter and pour it in a lined cupcake pan filling about 2/3 full
-Bake for about 18 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean
-Remove from oven and allow it to cool completely

While the cupcakes are in the oven, go ahead and make the most legit frosting of all times - Salted Caramel Buttercream Frosting. The recipe is from Taste of Home,  fairly easy & requires almost the same ingredients as the caramel filling (recipe below). The recipe calls for leaving it in refrigerator for 4 hours but I left for only 2.5 hours. The final result was extremely fluffy, too good to be true and had to stop myself from tasting licking the bowl.. Its for 10 cupcakes but go ahead and make the full recipe. You can thank me later. 

I hope we all feel same way about Salted caramel filling inside a cupcake right? It perfectly compliments the vanilla cupcakes and keeps the center super moist. I adapted the recipe from 52kitchenadventures & halved it. This is one of the easiest, no fail recipe & I added sea salt to finish it off.

Normally, I have no patience - we all know that. It gets worse when there are cupcakes on a cluttered counter top and caramel butter cream frosting heaven in the refrigerator- try resisting that..its almost painful but today I am trying to be patient and not obsess about messy house or dirty laundry. I want to bring out the hidden patient, creative side of me and decorate these babies with salted candied caramel. The recipe is from Cupcake Friday Project. These candied caramel thingy always intrigued me on TV - it was pretty cool (although I burned it a little bit) but that's my attempt to be creative.

Okay, seriously,this patience business is starting to annoy me and me want some cupcakes. Can we assemble them already?

First whip up the butter cream frosting as directed in the recipe. Stir the caramel filling and get ready for some serious cupcake! Use a pairing knife to cut the center of cupcake, add about 3/4-1 tablespoon filling in the center and frost it. Adorn them with caramel candies. Sprinkle some sea salt.

Although it was little lengthy of a process, each component of this cupcake was worth it..slightly sweet vanilla cupcakes was perfect with salted caramel filling and the frosting - it was spectacular. Candied caramel spirals added a slight crunch which I enjoyed a lot. Let's just say it was worth every minute, every calorie/fat/sugar consumed because guess what - I need all that energy, for I have massive cleaning to do!

Lemon and Blueberry muffins

Posted by - Rhonda's Saucy Adventures

Lemon and Blueberry muffins

Recipe adapted from BBC Food

I found two recipes that looked really good...I couldn't decide so I made both. These were my husbands favorites. I had extra crumble left over from the other recipe so I put it on top of these mini muffins. I liked both muffins so I will keep both recipes in my GO TO binder.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter

1 cup self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup sugar, plus 2 tsp for sprinkling

1/2 cup blueberries

1 tbsp lemon juice

zest from 1 lemon
2 eggs
5fl oz lemon yogurt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Line a 12-hole deep muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Melt the butter in a small pan over a low heat then set aside to cool for a few minutes.
3. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl and stir in the sugar, blueberries and lemon zest. Make a well in the center.
4. Beat the eggs with a whisk until smooth then beat in the yogurt, milk and melted butter until well combined. Stir into the flour mixture with a large metal spoon until very lightly mixed.
5. Divide the batter between the muffin cases. Place a teaspoon of the lemon curd on top of each one and sprinkle with the remaining sugar. Bake for 20 minutes or until well risen and golden-brown. Serve warm or allow to cool on a wire rack. (The lemon curd will be very hot, so don’t eat as soon as they come out of the oven.)