Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

Happy Valentines Day! I hope you are enjoying the day and the chocolate that comes along with it! :) It was great to be snowed in this year and have my husband around all day. Very romantic for our first Valentines married. Anyway, as one special way to celebrate I made him these awesome Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes. Its starts with a super moist, fine-crumb chocolate cupcake, then a creamy, smooth strawberry cream cheese frosting, and is topped with a strawberry, chocolate covered of course. 

This recipe was adapted from another recipe with a few minor changes. You can find the original here.

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

Cake:
 - 1/2 cup cocoa
 - 1 cup very hot water
 - 1 stick softened butter
 - 1 cup sugar
 - 2 eggs
 - 11/2 cups flour
 - 1/2 tsp salt
 - 1 tsp baking soda
 - 1/4 tsp baking powder

Frosting:
 - 1/4 cup finely chopped strawberries
 - 8 oz cream cheese
 - 1/2 cup butter
 - 3 - 4 cups powdered sugar
 - chocolate covered strawberries, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350. Beat together hot water and cocoa until smooth, allow to cool. Meanwhile, whip together butter and sugar. Add eggs, beat until very fluffy. Mix together flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a separate bowl. Add the cooled cocoa mixtures to eggs and beat till smooth. Next add the flour and beat for 30 seconds. Distribute the batter into lined cupcake tins, filling them 2/3 full. Bake for 15-18 min. Cool.

For frosting: beat together softened cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add chopped strawberries. Next, beat in powdered sugar until consistency is right for frosting. Frost cupcakes (I used a lot of frosting, it adds a great strawberry flavor!) and garnish with a chocolate covered strawberry. Enjoy!

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Easy Salted Caramel Sauce

This has been a great week. I found out I passed my last section of the CPA exam and got a good job offer, and its only Wednesday. Another victory of the week was this salted caramel sauce. So much creamy, caramely, sugary, salty goodness. Salted Caramel is the "in" thing right now, and in my opinion, for good reason. The extra saltiness cuts through the extra sweetness of the caramel, making it a great contrast to what other sweet item it may be paired with. Unfortunately, it doesn't cut the calories. But who cares anyway, especially when you pair the caramel with a sweet vanilla ice cream or a rich, velvety chocolate cupcake.

Super Easy Salted Caramel Sauce. No candy thermometer needed!

The other thing about this caramel sauce recipe is that its incredibly easy. No candy thermometer required. Its actually a cheater recipe. Purists would may not consider this caramel. Instead of starting with the normal white sugar and browning it to a beautiful amber color, this recipe has a base of brown sugar and a little corn syrup which gives it a great, smooth texture. It definitely is not missing any caramel flavor, and its impossible to mess up! I found and adapted the recipe from here. The amount of cream added to the caramel can be altered to make the caramel the consistency you want.

Stirring in the cream

Easy Salted Caramel Sauce

 - 1 Cup brown sugar

 - 1 Cup butter (2 sticks)

 - 1/4 cup corn syrup

 - 2 Tbsp vanilla

 - up to 1 cup heavy cream

Melt butter, brown sugar, corn syrup and vanilla over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring continuously. Reduce heat and let boil for 3-4 minutes until thickened. Allow to cool to a warm temperature. Add cream until desired consistency is reached. As the caramel cools it will thicken more so keep that in mind when adding the cream. Enjoy! Makes about 2 cups of caramel sauce. 

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