Caramel Vanilla Cupcakes

I had been thinking of making this crazy delicious cupcakes for quite some time!! I love everything with caramel, from caramel sauce, thru ice-cream, cookies, fudge, just everything! Fortunately it was my birthday so I had a perfect excuse to prepare them :) The fluffy vanilla muffin is just a start when you bite in, then you will discover the soft and sweet caramel hiding in the centre of the cupcake finished with a soft and delicate caramel frosting…hmmmm I was in heaven!!

Ingredients:
Makes approx. 15 muffins

• For the muffins:
• 200g soft butter
• 220g sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence or 1 package of vanilla sugar (16g)
• 4 eggs
• 225g flour
• 2 tsp baking powder

For the caramel:

• 500g sweetened condensed milk
• 1 package vanilla sugar

For the Caramel frosting:

• 250g mascarpone
• 100g softened butter
• 200g powder sugar
• 150g caramel 

Preparation:
For the muffins: Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a 12-cup standard muffin tin with paper liners.

In a mixing bowl beat together butter, sugars, salt until smooth and creamy. Keep steering and start adding eggs one by one until all combines. Add flour and baking powder and whisk until all the ingredients combine. With a spoon scoop evenly into the prepared cupcake liners. Remember to fill the muffin cases only 3/4 cavity otherwise they might overflow. Bake for about 15- 20min. You can check if the muffins are ready by sticking a cocktail stick into the centre of each muffin. It should come out clean and not sticky, if it is still sticky just leave it in the oven for 3-5 minutes more.

For the caramel: Pour the condensed milk in a pan, add vanilla sugar and cook on a very low heat for about 1,5h, steering from time to time. You will easily see when the caramel is ready as it will have a creamy light brown texture.
For the caramel frosting: In a mixing bowl beat the butter, add mascarpone and beat all together, add sugar and beat again. Don't get scared if you see that the ingredients start separating from each other forming crumbles, just keep whisking. It might take a while but everything will combine don't worry! Pour the cool caramel and whisk again until everything combines. 

To decorate the cupcakes, I cut out a small hole in order to fill the cupcakes with the caramel. You can do it with a spoon or a piping bag. When all your cupcakes are filled with caramel you can now frost them with the caramel frosting. Again I used a piping bag, but if you don't have one you can use a knife spreading the frosting over the cupcakes. You can also decorate with small caramel candies or spread a bit of sea salt! Enjoy!!!

 Sweet surprise hiding in the cupcake..