Brown sugar cupcakes with dark chocolate salted caramel frosting

When it comes to baking cupcakes, I love that the options of what to bake really could be endless. Sometimes I just seem to pluck random flavours out of thin air with no particular reason behind the choice. This past Sunday I knew I wanted to bake cupcakes and I got it in my head that they needed to be brown sugar ones with caramel frosting. However, I ended up compromising on the frosting, as I decided to use the ingredients I had on hand. For the brown sugar cupcakes I used the recipe I found here. For the frosting, the key ingredient was a small jar of dark chocolate salted caramel dessert sauce that I received as part of a gift. The other frosting ingredients were:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3 cups icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tsp meringue powder
• milk, to create the desired consistency

The butter was beaten by itself in my KitchenAid stand mixer for about thirty seconds. I added the vanilla, meringue powder and icing sugar next at a low speed. Lastly, I added in the dessert sauce and milk, mixing until I had achieved the desired consistency. I used my Wilton 1M decorating tip to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes and finished them off with a dash of fun confetti sprinkles. This was definitely a winning combination as proven by the three I ate. Now I wonder what flavours I will bring together next time.