It's Official!

Well, over the last few months I have fallen in love with food blogs, so what would be better than creating one myself! I grew up in the kitchen with my mom and grandmother and because of them I LOVE to be in the kitchen! My perfect day is spent in front of the stove making food for the people I love. I hope you will enjoy my musings and the recipes, and please leave me comments! I want to give a shout out to Joseph who helped my come up with my title, thanks so much!


For my first post I will start with a wonderful creation I worked on this week. I was going to a party to celebrate the end of my student teaching and I had signed up to bring a dessert. WELL, I love cupcakes, especially when they are mini because its a 1 to 1 ratio of cake and icing. How perfect! 


The next step, flavors! Now I wanted to make something unique and super yummy, and recently I have seen lots of blogs with salted caramel amazing and I knew I had to partake! The end result:


Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream Icing!

{Excuse the blurriness, I'm still learning picture taking skills}


I will be the first to admit that I definitely cheated this round and used a box cake mix. If you are looking to do a chocolate cake I definitely suggest Pillsbury Devil's Food because it will give you a much richer flavor. Plus it has a cup of pudding in the mix, so the cake is super moist, such a great bonus!


The frosting is the main treat! Salted Caramel Frosting!

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 TBS water
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (If you are using a salted butter, you should omit adding in the salt later on, or at least do a taste test to make sure you are creating a dehydrating dessert)
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp (scant) flakey kosher salt

First, making the caramel. Put the sugar and the water in a pot and stir this one time through, just to make sure that the water has gotten all the way through the sugar. Place the pot over medium heat and DO NOT STIR!!! As the sugar starts to bubble, swirl the pot to make sure the sugar is being fully mixed in. When the sugar starts to turn turn an amber color take the pot off of the burner and slowly add a small part of the cream. Then stir in the rest of the cream, you will start to see the traditional caramel color we all know and love appear! When all the cream was mixed in and my caramel was ready to go, I put it in a ramekin and let it cool about 45 minutes (or the length of an episode of Glee that was DVR'ed.) It's important to give the caramel time to cool before you move onto the next step so that it doesn't melt the icing!

Alright, now that the yummy caramel is made, the next part is simple! Take the butter that has been sitting out at room temperature and put it into your favorite mixing apparatus, then cream the butter until it is a light color. Slowly add in the powdered sugar and salt, and get everything well incorporated. Finally, slowly drizzle in the caramel until you have a delicious Salted Caramel Icing! 

To top off my cupcake I used a Wilton  Large Drop Flower Tip (similar to tip 23.) Simple as that! I can't tell you how many compliments I got at the party. This dessert is great because the savory nature of the caramel really plays well with the sweet cupcake! I hope you all enjoyed and come back to check out my next post!