Valentine's Day Treat
Around here Caramel is it! My daughter seems to have quite refined tastes for a 6 year old and her favorite sugary flavour is also a quite popular one in the culinary world. Salted Caramel. Lately every time she gets to pick out a treat at the dollar store it is either Rolos or those little plastic wrapped square caramels. My son veers towards chocolate but he follows along right behind his sister and picks those little chocolate wrapped caramel bundles called Rolo and if ever I am in the grocery store and see Rolo ice cream I tend to pick up a tub since it is a favorite of the husband.
As a bit of a side note about Rolo ice cream, have you notice how it hardly has any Rolos in it anymore? When it first came out it was loaded with them but now, even though it says right on the tub "Jam-Packed" there are hardly any in it at all. Who are they convincing? I am certainly not fooled. Maybe I should complain.
Anyway, in short caramel is a big hit here so for a special Valentine's Day desert (we hardly ever have desert) I decided to make chocolate caramel cupcakes. They turned out pretty fantastic and the little decorating idea I came up with was really cute so I thought I would share.
For the cupcakes themselves I wanted to put caramel or a Rolo right inside but I wasn't sure if it would work. I found one woman who had frozen them before she put them in the batter. I had a bag of mini Rolos that I could use so I put them in the freezer overnight before making the cupcakes. The recipe I used wasn't fantastic so I won't share that but you could use any chocolate cupcake recipe you really like. Once the batter was in the pan I pushed 3 frozen mini Rolo into each cupcake then smoothed the batter over them. I think this would work far better with regular sized Rolo since some of the mini ones seemed to completely melt into the cupcake. Not bad but there wasn't that nice caramel filling I was hoping for.
Now for the stuff that worked well. First I'll share my decoration idea, caramel hearts. I had a bag of those individually wrapped caramel squares. I took one square and cut it in half with kitchen shears. Then I rolled each half out into a little snake. Once it's about 2 inches long you twist the ends into the middle making it resemble a pretzel then pinch the bottom to make it heart shaped. You can see in the picture the different steps. Simple, cute and delicious. They were a definite hit.
The other recipe I will share is for salted caramel icing. It was fantastic if I do say so myself.
For this you will need:
4 cups icing sugar
1 cup butter
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp vanilla
5-6 Tbsp cream (I used 10% cause it's what I had on hand)
17-20 caramel squares
In a mixing bowl cream your butter with icing sugar, vanilla and about 2 Tbsp of cream or cool water. If you have it you can also use a Tbsp of meringue powder but if you don't have it don't worry. The meringue powder simply gives your icing a better stability. While the icing is mixing melt the caramel squares over low heat with 3 Tbsp of cream. Once they are just melted pour the mixture into your icing and continue to mix until totally incorporated and a good consistency. Since the caramels are warm this will heat and slightly melt the icing so it might seem a little on the runny side. I it still seems this way once it's room temperature you can mix in a little more icing sugar to get it thick enough. If it is too think you can add a little more cream, milk or water to thin it out. While the icing is sitting though make sure you cover it or it will get a "crust" on the top.
I then used a fairly large star icing tip to ice my cupcakes. With the thickness of the icing I piped I had enough to cover 22 cupcakes. I then decorated them with a mini Rolo, a chocolate caramel heart (left over from my daughters Valentines, and the caramel hearts I made. Then they were dusted with a bit more powdered sugar. They tasted fantastic and looked cute too!
As a bit of a side note about Rolo ice cream, have you notice how it hardly has any Rolos in it anymore? When it first came out it was loaded with them but now, even though it says right on the tub "Jam-Packed" there are hardly any in it at all. Who are they convincing? I am certainly not fooled. Maybe I should complain.
Anyway, in short caramel is a big hit here so for a special Valentine's Day desert (we hardly ever have desert) I decided to make chocolate caramel cupcakes. They turned out pretty fantastic and the little decorating idea I came up with was really cute so I thought I would share.
For the cupcakes themselves I wanted to put caramel or a Rolo right inside but I wasn't sure if it would work. I found one woman who had frozen them before she put them in the batter. I had a bag of mini Rolos that I could use so I put them in the freezer overnight before making the cupcakes. The recipe I used wasn't fantastic so I won't share that but you could use any chocolate cupcake recipe you really like. Once the batter was in the pan I pushed 3 frozen mini Rolo into each cupcake then smoothed the batter over them. I think this would work far better with regular sized Rolo since some of the mini ones seemed to completely melt into the cupcake. Not bad but there wasn't that nice caramel filling I was hoping for.
The other recipe I will share is for salted caramel icing. It was fantastic if I do say so myself.
For this you will need:
4 cups icing sugar
1 cup butter
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp vanilla
5-6 Tbsp cream (I used 10% cause it's what I had on hand)
17-20 caramel squares
In a mixing bowl cream your butter with icing sugar, vanilla and about 2 Tbsp of cream or cool water. If you have it you can also use a Tbsp of meringue powder but if you don't have it don't worry. The meringue powder simply gives your icing a better stability. While the icing is mixing melt the caramel squares over low heat with 3 Tbsp of cream. Once they are just melted pour the mixture into your icing and continue to mix until totally incorporated and a good consistency. Since the caramels are warm this will heat and slightly melt the icing so it might seem a little on the runny side. I it still seems this way once it's room temperature you can mix in a little more icing sugar to get it thick enough. If it is too think you can add a little more cream, milk or water to thin it out. While the icing is sitting though make sure you cover it or it will get a "crust" on the top.
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