Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Printable Cupcake Toppers

I’ve never been huge on spending a ton of time making cutesy desserts for themed parties, so I’m always looking for simple ways to dress things up. Festive, but not time-consuming is the hope. I saw a post on pumpkin spice cupcakes from i heart naptime and she had the most adorable cupcake toppers. They looked like little flags and said things like “made with love’ and “just for you.” All she had to do was wrap the flag around a stick and shove it into her cupcake and she had the cutest little treats ever. Yes, I thought. Cupcake toppers. That’s the secret. 

I looked all over, but couldn’t find a cupcake topper I liked. The internet had an inexplicable dearth of flags. The i heart naptime lady had flags. I wanted flags – in fact, I was having major flag jealousy. Luckily, I’d recently learned to use Adobe Illustrator, so I popped it open, played around a bit, and came out with – you guessed it – flags! I made two designs, orange with “Trick or Treat” and black with “Happy Halloween.” It’s not like I’m proud or anything. 

Now that I had my flags, I knew I needed a cupcake that would be awesome enough to match. Salted caramel seems to be the flavor of the season, and these cupcakes do that glorious sweet and saltiness justice. The other nice thing about salted caramel and dark chocolate is that it comes out practically black and orange, which makes these treats a shoo-in for the perfect Halloween dessert. The cupcake base is a doctored cake mix, and as you probably already know, I’m a big believer in doctored mixes. They bake so evenly and come out perfectly moist with an intense flavor. These dark chocolate cupcakes are no different. Between the cute cupcake toppers and the amazing flavor combo, you’ll be the hit of any party!

Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Cupcakes

2015-10-15 09:58:11

Yields 24

Salted caramel buttercream pairs with an decadent dark chocolate cupcake base.

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Prep Time

30 min

Cook Time

20 min

Total Time

1 hr

Prep Time

30 min

Cook Time

20 min

Total Time

1 hr

Dark Chocolate Cupcake

1. 1 box dark chocolate cake mix
2. 8 oz chocolate pudding mix
3. 4 eggs
4. 1/3 cup melted butter
5. 1 cup mllk

Salted Caramel Buttercream

1. 1/2 cup butter
2. 1/2 cup shortening
3. 1 tsp vanilla
4. 4 cups powdered sugar
5. 1/3 cup caramel sauce
6. 1 tsp salt

Cupcakes

1. Mix together cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, butter, and milk.
2. Spoon into lined muffin tin filling cups 2/3 full.
3. Bake at 250° for 15-20 minutes.

Frosting

1. Whip together butter and shortening.
2. Add vanilla and caramel sauce and mix until combined.
3. Add powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time until desired consistency is reached.
4. Frost cooled cupcakes, then sprinkle salt over the top.

Note

1. You can use any caramel sauce you like. I used this one from Sally's Baking Addiction since I had some left over from another project.
2. I prefer to leave the salt off until the end, since it makes piping difficult. If you're not planning on piping, it works just fine to mix the salt into the frosting.

By Diane Homan

Homan at Home https://homanathome.com/

And now for the cupcake toppers!

Once you’ve made your delicious cupcakes, you get to add the toppers! The file is below in both pdf and jpg form. I printed mine on cardstock, since I wanted them to be a somewhat sturdy. Then, I cut them out, wrapped them around toothpicks, glued them together with glue sticks, and pushed them into the tops of the cupcakes. 

PDF:halloween_cupcake_toppers.pdf
JPG:halloween_cupcake_toppers.jpg
Warning; The buttercream can cause your toppers to get little grease stains near where they’re stuck in. The fix for this is to stick them in just before you take them to the party. It takes several hours to get the stains going, and I doubt your cupcakes will last that long!

I linked up at Lil Luna! See other fun and exciting ideas at the Link Party Palooza!