Tasty Tuesday-Milk Dud Cupcakes

SO I have this fetish for this particular straws that can only be had in a grocery store found in Texas. I happened to know that a friend of ours was going house hunting down in Texas and in order to bribe him into buying said straws I promised him baked goods of his choice. His exact words for his choice were " I want a chocolate cupcake with something to do with caramel". So I looked all over the web for chocolate caramel cupcakes. There were like 2 whole recipes and they looked pretty intense. So I decided to get creative. What I came up with is these: Milk Dud Cupcakes.

Now don't get to excited. In my opinion they looked better than they actually were. However I am not a huge frosting person and the caramel frosting was super on the sweet side! The guy I baked them for LOVED them though. Therefore you must all bake these and give me your professional opinions;)

OK enough background info, onto the recipe!

For the actual cupcake portion you will need: 

• Chocolate Cake mix of your choice. I used Duncan Hines Devils Food.
• Ingredients to make Cake mix according to package. (Eggs, Oil, Water...)
• 24 unwrapped caramels
• Not necessary but I highly recommend FOIL cupcake liners.

Prepare Cake mix according to package directions. Then fill cupcake liners not even half full. Put in oven for 5 mins only! Take out and insert one upwrapped caramel into each cake and cover with enough cake mix to make liners 2/3 full. Bake about 18 minutes more or until toothpick inserted into actual cake part (not the caramel!) comes out clean. What you will have when you pull these out is a cakey milk dud! The caramel will have sunk to the bottom and become chewy, hence the name:) This is where the foil liners come in handy. The caramel has a tendency to stick to the bottom of the liner, the foil ones are more non stick.

Now for the Caramel Frosting to ice these guys you will need:

1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1/2 cup packed brown sugar ( I used Dark brown. DON'T recommend this, made them to sweet!)
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons half & half

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 * Extra Ingredient: Box of Milk Dud Candies.

Here is what you want to do:

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter then add the milk and brown sugar. Bring to a boil and continue to boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat, and beat in 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar. Cool slightly, then at medium to almost high speed beat in the remaining 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar.You may need a little more or less powdered sugar depending on the consistency you like to work with for frosting. I had to refrigerate my frosting to get it to set up right and it was still a little on the runny side, so if you have better success let me know what you did! This step may not be neccassary and if so go right to icing your cupcakes. After you make them pretty:) be sure to top each one with a milk dud!

So go! Bake these and make me world famous. Or bake these and when they are horrible pretend you have no idea what went wrong, cause you know I would never bake something like that!;)