A salty, sweet, sticky morsel

My friend K. and I had a coffee date scheduled. I hadn't seen her for a while, and I absolutely adore her, so I wanted to bring her a special treat. It was raining unrelentlessly...and I could picture her curled up with a good book, a steaming cup of tea, and the salted caramel cupcakes that I was about to make for her. 


Salty and sweet are BFFs 4eva. Like, totes. (Ok, enough of that nonsense). It starts off with a pretty basic cupcake (the brown sugar makes the batter a lovely caramel color). Then I topped it off with cream cheese frosting, with some caramel drizzled into it. 

The tricky part was trying not to overmix the frosting, as it would get rid of the beautiful caramel ribbons. After I carefully frosted them, I drizzled some more caramel on top and just enhanced the swirls a bit. The piece de resistance? New Zealand sea salt. That punch from the salt really made this cupcake. Without it, it would've been just an ordinary cupcake. Here's the end result:

I hope she enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed making them for her!