So about once a month we get together with our friends for what we call “family dinner”. We take turns hosting and make it a potluck event. This month was my turn to bring dessert and the request was made for something chocolate! I decided to go out of my comfort zone and make some fancy cupcakes. Now I am not a baker, like at all. We don’t normally eat dessert so I opted to start off with a boxed cake mix and save the headache. However, if you are a baker feel free to whip up your favorite chocolate cake recipe!
Once your cupcakes are in the oven baking you need to get your caramel salted. This is a super easy process, simply mix 1 cup of caramel with 1 teaspoon of salt. I used a chunky sea salt, but you can use whatever you have on hand! I chose to mix mine in a measuring cup that I lightly sprayed with non stuck spray first. Doing this made it super easy to pour it into my squeeze bottle. The next step is to fill your cupcakes. Once you pull them out of the oven, while they are still hot, stick the nozzle of your squeeze bottle into the center of each cupcake and squeeze some of that yummy caramel inside! Now walk away and let them cool off.
Once your cupcakes are cool it is time to frost those bad boys. Since I am not a baker I don’t have any fancy nozzles, tips or even a piping bag. Instead I rock a ziplock baggie. However I can share a trick for filling your baggie. Put the inside a cup with the edges folded over the outside of the glass. You can then easily spoon your frosting into the baggie without making a mess of needing a few extra hands! Simply cut the corner off one of the bottom points and squeeze your frosting out. I chose to start in the middle of the cupcake and swirl my way out. This gave me a really nice even swirl without any lumps. 
Once they are all frosted you’ll need to get that squeeze bottle of salted caramel back out. Simply squeeze beautiful lines of gooey caramel over the top of your cupcakes. I placed my cupcakes into the serving tray first and added the caramel directly in there. This saves you from getting your hands all gooey trying to move them after. For the final touch (since we are going super fancy) I grabbed a bite size dark chocolate best bar and ran it over the zesting side of my regular grater to get some “chocolate dust”. I sprinkled this over the still gooey caramel and voilà! You have done super easy, extra delicious fancy pants cupcakes!
