Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcakes

Daddy likes yellow cake with chocolate frosting, but Cassidy wanted to bump it up a notch. For a Father's Day treat, she baked Chocolate Salted Caramel cupcakes. It's yellow cake with a Rolo baked in the center. Then, they are topped with chocolate cream cheese frosting, dipped in caramel sauce, and sprinkled with salt. Yummy!

 Cassidy combines the milk, eggs, and vanilla.

 She sifts the dry ingredients.

 Mommy's on a diet, so we tried something different.

We substituted 80 calories of Greek yogurt for 

1200 calories of butter. 

 We baked Rolos in the middle of the cupcakes.

 The cupcakes are baked. 

 

Stirring chocolate into the cream cheese frosting.

Her shirt says she's "Daddy's Little Cupcake!"

 The taste test

Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcake

We used the recipe for All Occasion Downy Yellow Cake from a previous post, but we experimented with a few changes in order to lower the calories a bit. Instead of six egg yolks, we only used four, and instead of 12 tablespoons of butter (1200 calories!!!), we used a container of plain Greek yogurt (only 80 calories). The cream cheese frosting is Cassidy's own recipe. Here are the recipes:

 Yellow Cake

4 large egg yolks

1 cup milk (we used skim)

2 1/4 tsp vanilla

3 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 TBSP + 1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

5 oz contain plain Greek yogurt

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

1 stick butter, softened

8 oz cream cheese, softened

2 tsp vanilla

4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate

2 cups confectioner's sugar

 

Topping

caramel ice cream topping

Kosher salt

The concept of this cupcake was really delicious. However, the lower calorie substitutions did not go unnoticed. Substituting the Greek yogurt for the butter left the cake with a chewy texture. The cake was still moist because it was not overbaked, but the texture was not completely desirable. Perhaps more yogurt was needed. Cassidy plans to do some more experimenting with Greek Oikos yogurt because she and her mom are big fans. Also, the cake really wasn't yellow enough because of using only four egg yolks instead of six. Baking the Rolo in the middle didn't work at all. It didn't melt. It only became hard. Finally, the ideal salt for a salted caramel cupcake is sea salt. Cassidy used Kosher salt because that's what she had on hand. It tasted great but was lacking the pretty little crystals of salt on top. 

All in all, this cupcake just needs a do over. Stay tuned . . .