Special Toffee Cupcakes and obsessive baking

I've been meaning to put this recipe up for a week now but it's been a bit of a crazy week so again I'm blogging later than expected.

Anyways a few weeks ago I was asked by my friend Alex to make some cupcakes for her Grandma's Birthday and they had to include Thornton's special toffee as that was her Grandmas favorite. I did play with the idea of somehow melting the toffee into the cake but the toffee is so hard it just wouldn't make for good texture. So I decided to make a toffee flavoured sponge with caramel icing and then I smashed up toffee into tiny pieces to sprinkle over the top and topped with one large chunk before drizzling the icing in toffee sauce. They went down very well! The cake was very soft and light and the icing sweet and topped with plenty of toffee to add a hit of toffee flavour.

Here they are:

If i was making these to have with little or no icing I would use dark rather than light brown sugar to give the cake a darker, richer taste however with a big swirl of icing the cake is sweet enough.

Here's how they're made:

80g Unsalted Butter, softened
150g Soft light brown sugar
180g Plain flour
1/2 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
1 tsp Vanilla essence
2 large eggs
100ml Milk

Makes 12 - 16

Preheat the oven to 190deg C and line a muffin tin with cases.
Beat the butter and sugar together until soft and fluffy. Mix in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Beat together the eggs, vanilla essence and  milk and add this to the dry mix. Mixing until you have a smooth batter.

Fill each paper case 2/3 full and bake for 18- 20 mins until risen and springy to the touch. Leave to cool before icing.

(For an alternative to make sticky toffee cupcakes add 180g pitted and chopped dates and replace the milk with 180ml boiling water. Soak the dates in the water for 20 minutes and add these to the dry ingredients after adding the egg and vanilla.)

For the Icing

160g Unsalted butter
500g Icing sugar
50ml Milk
100g Dulce de leche
Toffee to decorate

Mix together the butter and icing sugar gradually add the milk and mix well add the tinned caramel and beat until light and fluffy.

Spoon or pipe the icing onto the cakes and top with crushed toffee and drizzle with toffee sauce or dulce de leche.

and all packed up and ready to go

And that's it!

Ok well that's nearly all for today but before I go I'd like to confess that I think my baking addiction has gone to far! I've been trying to not eat as much naughty foods recently but I am still itching to bake so last week I found a silly, bargain of a cook book and before I knew it I actually found myself baking. Not for me or boyfriend but I was baking healthy, tasty treats for my dog! Yep my baking addiction has officially gone to far!

The book was a bargain (99p) and as well as loving to bake I do like my doggy to eat well so I suppose that doesn't make me too crazy (does it?) but here they are, the banana and carrot oaty dog biscuits I made:

They actually smell damn good! although there's no sugar in them so they taste pretty bland (yes I tried a nibble!)
Clyro on the other hand loves them and starts wagging his tail whenever I bring him one. I also wrapped a few up for my friends dogs who also approved. (Although my friends might think I'm a bit mad)

Any way that's it for today

off to decide what to bake next

bye for now

Cupcake Kris xxx

Linked up to sweets for a saturday