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Treat your friends and family with these rich and delicious chocolate caramel-filled cupcakes with a fun and festive rainbow frosting!

I’ve recently become obsessed with watching frosting videos on YouTube.  Because I’m nerdy like that.  As much as I love cupcakes {and believe me I looooove cupcakes} I could not frost a cupcake to save my soul until about 3 weeks ago.  At least not with those big, beautiful bakery type swirls.  I was a frosting smearing, zip top baggie squeezing froster until I finally ordered some frosting tips (aff) from Amazon.

And let me say that I am obsessed.  I am inventing new reasons to make cupcakes just so I can use these frosting tips!  As if you really need a reason to make cupcakes.  I made my lemon cupcakes last month and then enjoyed piping this chocolate mousse into glass bowls just so I could break out one of the tips.  But now just regular piping isn’t enough.  Now I have to get fancy!  And since St. Patrick’s Day is coming up I was thinking rainbow!  And they turned out SO much better than I really thought they would!

I watched this video on YouTube about 1.56 million times before finally attempting to do this myself.  I absolutely love gel food coloring and have used them in everything from my patriotic swirl cookies to my conversation heart sugar cookies and I just love how they add a beautiful color without adding a gross flavor.  Mine are from Wilton (aff) but Ree from The Pioneer Woman loves to use AmeriColor (aff).

I’m so annoyed with myself that I didn’t take pictures of the how-to for this frosting but that video explains it all!  You’ll just paint up the side of the bag {they used a skewer, I used straws} making sure to start down in the coupler that holds your frosting tip in place.  They squeeze that frosting that isn’t colored all the way onto their board but why waste frosting?  I just ended up with a cupcake that wasn’t quite as rainbow-y as the rest.

Originally I tried stuffing caramels into the center of the cupcakes to create a molten-y caramel-y center but what I got was a caramel square that sunk to the bottom, stuck to my silicone cupcake liners, and ripped off the bottom of my cupcakes.  I could probably bring my molten caramel vision to fruition with something like a Rolo vs a caramel square but lucky for me I had some of my friend Nicole’s Kahlua salted caramel sauce on hand from when I made these amazeballs Kahlua salted caramel frappes last week.  And it was the perrrrrfect filling.  Especially because when I cut into a cupcake it just oozed out onto the plate.  Are you drooling yet? 

Do you have a current YouTube obsession?  Don’t be shy!  Tell me all about it 🙂

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Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes w/ Rainbow Frosting

Yield: 15 cupcakes

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

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Ingredients

For the Cupcakes:

• 2 ½ cups flour
• ¾ cup cocoa powder
• 1 egg white
• 2 cups whole milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• ¾ cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 2 tsp baking powder

For the Salted Caramel Sauce:

• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• Pinch of sea salt
• Pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup butter

For the Frosting:

• in Gel food coloring red, orange, yellow, blue, and green
• 1 Tbs vanilla
• 2 cups ½ powdered sugar
• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• Straws or skewers

Instructions

For the Cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl and set aside.
2. Whisk together vegetable oil, vanilla extract, milk, and egg white until just foamy. Do not over mix!
3. Add dry ingredients into wet and mix until just combined, scraping down sides of the bowl with a spatula.
4. Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners and fill cups ⅔ full.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

For the Salted Caramel Sauce:

1. In a medium sauce pan melt together butter, brown sugar, cream and salt and bring to a boil. 
2. Let boil for 3-4 minutes on a medium low heat without stirring.
3. Remove from heat, stir in sea salt, and set aside to cool completely.

For the Frosting:

1. Cream together butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla until smooth.
2. Prepare your piping bag and using straws or skewers and gel food coloring paint a thin* straight line of food coloring up the inside of the pastry bag, starting at the bottom inside the coupler or frosting tip. Do this with each color leaving about 1½ to 2 inches between each strip.
3. Add frosting to piping bag, shake down to the bottom, and squeeze out all the air, pipe onto your cupcakes as normal.

Notes

Treat your friends and family with these rich and delicious chocolate caramel-filled cupcakes with a fun and festive rainbow frosting!

I've recently become obsessed with watching frosting videos on YouTube.  Because I'm nerdy like that.  As much as I love cupcakes {and believe me I looooove cupcakes} I could not frost a cupcake to save my soul until about 3 weeks ago.  At least not with those big, beautiful bakery type swirls.  I was a frosting smearing, zip top baggie squeezing froster until I finally ordered some frosting tips (aff) from Amazon.

And let me say that I am obsessed.  I am inventing new reasons to make cupcakes just so I can use these frosting tips!  As if you really need a reason to make cupcakes.  I made my lemon cupcakes last month and then enjoyed piping this chocolate mousse into glass bowls just so I could break out one of the tips.  But now just regular piping isn't enough.  Now I have to get fancy!  And since St. Patrick's Day is coming up I was thinking rainbow!  And they turned out SO much better than I really thought they would!

 

I watched this video on YouTube about 1.56 million times before finally attempting to do this myself.  I absolutely love gel food coloring and have used them in everything from my patriotic swirl cookies to my conversation heart sugar cookies and I just love how they add a beautiful color without adding a gross flavor.  Mine are from Wilton (aff) but Ree from The Pioneer Woman loves to use AmeriColor (aff).

I'm so annoyed with myself that I didn't take pictures of the how-to for this frosting but that video explains it all!  You'll just paint up the side of the bag {they used a skewer, I used straws} making sure to start down in the coupler that holds your frosting tip in place.  They squeeze that frosting that isn't colored all the way onto their board but why waste frosting?  I just ended up with a cupcake that wasn't quite as rainbow-y as the rest.

Originally I tried stuffing caramels into the center of the cupcakes to create a molten-y caramel-y center but what I got was a caramel square that sunk to the bottom, stuck to my silicone cupcake liners, and ripped off the bottom of my cupcakes.  I could probably bring my molten caramel vision to fruition with something like a Rolo vs a caramel square but lucky for me I had some of my friend Nicole's Kahlua salted caramel sauce on hand from when I made these amazeballs Kahlua salted caramel frappes last week.  And it was the perrrrrfect filling.  Especially because when I cut into a cupcake it just oozed out onto the plate.  Are you drooling yet? 

Do you have a current YouTube obsession?  Don't be shy!  Tell me all about it 🙂

[wprm-recipe id="7076"]