Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes

I'm usually pretty lucky when it comes to baking; I've never really had one of those days where I wish I'd never bothered. Today I came pretty close! I was a little hesitant to make this post, but everyone loves a bit of cake, and while these aren't the best ones I've ever made I thought I'd show them anyway.

I'm a massive fan of the Hummingbird Bakery and their books are my first (to be fair, they're my only) point of call when I'm in the mood to bake. I decided to go for the Salted Caramel Cupcakes, but given that it'd be mainly family eating them and they're a little picky, I omitted the 'Salted' part of the recipe and instead made regular chocolate caramel cupcakes!

Everything was going well; I combined the dry ingredients (after a last minute dash to get Cocoa Powder as I forgot to get some in Tesco this morning!), then added the milk and eggs to the mixture and mixed thoroughly. I lined my tin with these cute cases I picked up on a recent trip to Edinburgh, and poured in the mixture. I generally find using an ice-cream scoop makes this process a little easier and makes your cupcakes nice and even... except on this occasion. For some reason, I didn't realise these cases were slightly smaller than the regular muffin cases Hummingbird suggest you use. Needless to say, my cupcakes overflowed and weren't nice and evenly filled. Ooops!

Never mind, I thought, it's nothing trimming off the excess and adding a nice bit of buttercream can't fix. Wrong again! As I carefully tried to cut away the bits of cake that had overflowed, the cake started to come away from the case, which just made them look even worse. Argh! When I came to make the buttercream, I realised that this ridiculously warm weather we're having at the moment does not help! The recipe says to use softened butter, but to be honest, I think this just turned into a big gloopy mess. Once I managed to get some onto the cake, I had to put them in the fridge to set it slightly, which is something I hate to do as I'm scared the cakes dry out!

But at the end of the day, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and they taste pretty damn good if I say so myself! The frosting could definitely do with being a little thicker, and maybe have a bit more caramel added to it, as the 30g the recipe states doesn't seem enough.

So, yeah not my best effort, but I think I know where I went wrong at least, so I may give these another go sometime soon and hopefully I'll get on a little better.