Cupcake Wars

Tomorrow is the 2nd of 4 installments of our Food Drive Bake Sale at work and it has officially been dubbed Cupcake Wars.  I'm not sure how many of us are baking, but I know there will be at least 5 different kinds of cupcakes.  My contribution to this friendly war is Chocolate Caramel cupcakes :)

As most people know, I'm a cake mix girl...it's not that I have anything against making a cake from scratch, it's just so much easier to use a box & it's almost as good as from scratch...nuff said :)  Devil's Food happens to be my favorite chocolate cake, so that was the box of choice.

Now, onto the frosting...frosting is something I feel should ALWAYS be made from scratch...after all, cake is just a vehicle to get the frosting in your mouth, right?!  Yesterday, I made some semi-homemade caramel using my friend's recipe/method.  Once completely cooled, I whipped said caramel with a stick of softened butter, an obscene amount of powdered sugar (okay, maybe it was only 1-2 cups), a tsp of vanilla bean paste & then beat this bowl of sweet stickiness into submission!

Hopefully, we'll have tons of cupcakes & an equal amount of cupcake eaters tomorrow!  Wishing you a night of caramelly sweet dreams :)