Caramel Cupcakes

When I saw the post asking people in my congregation to donate baked goods to be used as prizes for a bingo event held last night, I thought about making a King Cake.  Then I realized the difficulty to explain to a northern (and really, Yankee) Jewish congregation about such things and remembered the reaction when I'd suggested having a chili cookoff (which some believe is impossible to make kosher, which would be a huge surprise to my old community in Dallas), and decided to make other things.

Because there are always people who want something gluten-free, I offered to make chocolate cookies.  They did not come out as pretty as the recipe promised, but seemed edible.  They probably did not flatten out as much as the recipe said they would because I was a little short of confectioner's sugar and made up for it with cocoa, then used regular-sized chips instead of mini-chips.

Since I am allergic to chocolate I could not test them, and I was glad for an unexpectedly warm day that allowed me to open the windows while they baked.  I ended up with twenty-six so wrapped up two packages of a baker's dozen each.

The cookies used only egg whites so I looked for a recipe to use up the yolks.  I thought of making more cookies, maybe to donate to BiCi Co's Earn-a-Bike crew.  I had planned to use one of my Pampered Chef packets to make a quick Apple Cider cake with cider drizzle, because I have apple cider to use up, or a Caramel Latte loaf.  I thought if I made the Caramel Latte mix into cupcakes, I could add caramel frosting and use some to fill the cookies into pairs.

Then I found a recipe for Golden Cake in one of  my old (1930) cookbooks, and plans changed!

As you can see, the recipe uses only egg yolks - and exactly the number left over from the cookies!

I also had cream left from making biscuits last weekend, and it would be just enough for the cake and frosting.  So I made this, substituting vanilla and imitation black walnut extracts for the orange, because I thought those would work better with the caramel.  I baked the recipe as eight cupcakes, luckily using large decorative papers because it rises nicely.  One cupcake quickly disappeared as quality control.

While the cupcakes baked, I made the caramel frosting, from a 1957 recipe.  I don't have a Mixmaster, I have a Kitchenaid, but I love how this little booklet offered so many ways to use the machine:

The tedious parts were basically no-work, just the occasional stirring as the caramel came to the boil, and waiting for it to cool.  To speed that I poured most of the caramel into the bowl of my Kitchenaid.  I used the whisk attachment.  I worried about the amount of confectioner's sugar (see above - I thought I had more than the new package, but I didn't, and it was just under four cups) so I put a small slick of the caramel on top of the cupcakes, under the frosting.  And quality control got a taste, too.

This was the end result:

I had a bakery package for four cupcakes, so I made six and selected the ones I thought looked best.  They have a huge pile of frosting on top, over a very light cake, with that slick of caramel, and just barely fit.  Hopefully people were attracted and took them as an early prize.  I have the other two cupcakes in my freezer, to doorbell-ditch for a friend, or take to my mother for her birthday.