Happy Sunday! This week brings Dinner Party Cupcakes! This client is a huge fan of chocolate with caramel but since the last few orders have been dark chocolate cake she wanted to mix it up a bit. So I suggested yellow cupcakes with chocolate and caramel accent flavors instead. She loved the idea!

Adding filling inside a cupcake is pretty easy to do but adding candy to the inside is a bit tricky. Yup, there are actual tricks to this process. First of all you need to make your batter a bit more dense than normal. This means you can either add another egg, giving your cupcake a poundcake type of consistancy, or you can add less water or milk to make the batter thicker. I always add the extra egg to mine. The reason this is so important is that if the batter is of normal consistancy the candy is going to drop right to the bottom of the cupcake instead of being in the center. I have used Hershey kisses, mini Reeses cups and now I can say I've used ROLO's.

After you have put the batter into the cups take the candy and submerge it about 3/4 of the way into the batter. You will still be able to see about 1/3 of the candy sticking up out of the top. Now as the batter cooks and rises it will cover the candy and the weight of the candy will also help it to sink down into the middle.

ROLO's are a bit heavier than any candy I have worked with to date so I had no idea how far they would actually sink. Turns out they ended up about 3/4 down the center of the cupcake, not half way like I wanted. So next time I use them I will know to only put the candy in so that half of it is sticking up out of the batter.

But you can see that it leaves a yummy gooey caramel and chocolate surprise for the guest to discover! Really YUMMY!

The topper is also a ROLO. I just sprinkled graham cracker crumbs onto a baking sheet and then placed the candy on top. Into the oven at the same time as the cupcakes except that these only bake for 5 minutes. Once they came out I used an offset spatula sprayed with cooking spray to flatten them out over the graham cracker crumbs. Then, while still warm, sprinkled them with gold colored sugar. Then I took them off the tray and put them in the freezer to set up while the cupcakes finished baking and cooling.

I used a soft buttercream recipe so the top would be soft and creamy, drizzled it with chocolate sauce and added the rounds of melted ROLO's to the top. The hostess and her guests were very happy to see these arrive and, of course, I saved a few for my own family so we can have a treat as well!

Next week I get to share with you a special family treat! See you then!

Cat