Payday Cupcakes

I love Payday candy bars. When I found a recipe for a Payday cupcake I scrawled it on my list of cupcakes to try. I had planned on following the recipe as closely as possible but ended up deviating in a few places. You can find the original recipe on Your Cup of Cake. It's a basic white cake frosted with caramel frosting, topped with salted peanuts and a caramel drizzle.

This recipe calls for a doctored white cake mix. I went ahead and used the website's directions instead of my own favorite way of doctoring cake mixes. The cake turned out really soft and fluffy and crumbly. I know some people really like a soft and fluffy cake, but I like denser cakes, so next time I'm sticking with my own way.

One thing I did my own way was use my own caramel frosting recipe. Most caramel frosting recipes end up tasting pretty similar and my version calls for milk instead of cream. Here's my version.

Caramel Frosting:

1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 - 2 cups powdered sugar

- Bring brown sugar, butter and milk to a boil over medium heat
- Cook and stir 2 minuters
- Remove from heat and stir in vanilla
- Cool to lukewarm
- Gradually beat in powdered sugar until frosting reaches spreading consistency

You know how I like really thick frosting? Well, this time I went too far. The frosting looked great and I thought I'd make it even better by adding a little more powdered sugar. I thought I had done a good thing until I tried to pipe it. It was just too thick. It would barely come through the piping tip and then it pushed my tip right through my ziplock bag. Instead of putting the batch back in the bowl and beating a little milk into it, I decided to spread it on then and roll the whole thing in the salted peanuts. I ended up having to really push the peanuts into the frosting to make them stick, but it worked out.

I originally wanted to make the cakes look like the picture on the recipe, but as my frosting was unpipable (yes, that's a made up word) I opted for a simpler decor. I think my version looks more like an actual payday, but they are not as pretty as the original recipe.

I finished each cupcake with a drizzle of store bought caramel ice cream topping (another slight deviation). After tasting one, I added additional salt over the top of all the cupcakes. Even after that I thought they could have probably used more salt.

Terrific flavor! I'm glad I went with the white cake. I had contemplated substituting a peanut butter cake, but I think that would have made it too overwhelmingly peanutty (another made up word).