A Little Something Sweet

In general, I'm not really much for cupcakes. They seem kind of fussy and messy and just not my thing.

But caramel cupcakes? Maybe they're worth the trouble, right?

There is no end to my love of all flavors on the caramel-butterscotch-toffee spectrum. So when I saw caramel cupcakes in my new Blackbird Bakery Gluten Free cookbook, I was intrigued enough to go buy frilly paper cupcake liners.

The cupcakes were delicious--buttery and full of vanilla flavor. Nothing screamed "gluten free!" in taste or texture. Like nearly all gf baked good I've attempted, they needed an additional 10 minutes in the oven beyond what the recipe recommends.

The caramel flavor comes entirely from the frosting which was was sweet enough to make my head ring--a little goes a long, long way and I had plenty leftover. I even added some sea salt to try and pull it back from the edge but it was still too sweet for my taste. So, a bit of a puzzle--the frosting was way too sweet but, because it has all the caramel flavor, it's kind of the focus.

Next time I will try subbing out some brown sugar for the granulated in the cakes themselves so the caramel flavor is better distributed. Maybe I could get away with less frosting...

My kids, it should be said, had no trouble with the overly-sweet frosting and declared them delicious. I found them a little less intense and pretty much perfect by the second day. Especially with a nice, steaming hot latte.

I was going to type all of this up for you but realized that it's all available on the Blackbird Bakery blog. I used half the recipe to get 1 dozen cupcakes and a copious supply of frosting. And while the cactus decorations are charming, you can see I skipped that part. One thing these cupcakes did not need is more sugar!