A little bit of caramel never hurt anyone

Caramel, caramel, caramel..mmmmmm!

I got a craving for something, well with a caramel taste and I had a recipe printed out for caramel cupcakes, PERFECT!

This was a pretty easy recipe and they tasted very good!

1/2 cup butter, room temp
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar (I added just a tad bit more because I LOVE brown sugar)
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar for 2-3 minutes, until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add a third of the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and beat on low just until incorporated. Add half of the milk and beat until blended. Add another third of the flour, then the rest of the milk, and then the rest of the flour mixture. Beat each of these additions on low just until combined.
Divide the batter between 12 muffin cups and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Be patient.....(thats the hard part)

For the frosting,

1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp water
a few drops of lemon juice
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup butter, softened
3-4 cups powdered sugar

(and if you want to make it how I did, I added some caramel ice cream topping as well :) )

In a medium saucepan, heat the sugar, water and lemon juice over medium-high heat and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Cook, without stirring but swirling the pan occasionally, for 4-5 minutes, or until the mixture turns deep golden. Remove from the heat and whisk in cream. Some of the caramel will harden ( I ate these pieces) just keep stirring and it will go back to liquid form. Cool this completely. ( I stuck my whole saucepan in the freezer for awhile to cool faster)

Beat the butter until fluffy, then add half the powdered sugar and half the caramel mixture and beat until smooth. Add more sugar and caramel until you have the consistency you want. This is where I tested it and it just was not caramel..y enough so I added in the caramel ice cream topping...this made it just right!

So here you are, very plain, but very very good!

:)