Salted Caramel Coconut Cupcakes
The best things in life don’t have to be hard. These super simple Salted Caramel Coconut Cupcakes take hardly any time or talent and they are sooooooo good!
I love almonds and now that they are starting to come up with different flavors like salted caramel and coconut, I am in heaven. I have also been doing a little experimenting. For these cupcakes, I chopped up some salted caramel almonds from Blue Diamond Almonds and mixed it with some coconut. So yummy!
I am a minimalist in almost everything but my food. I love food that comes at you with a rich mix of flavors. These cupcakes are perfect. In one bite you get the smooth frosting with a hint of cream cheese, the salty nuttiness of the almonds, mixed with the sweet flakiness of the coconut, and the rich flavor of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Heavenly!
And my favorite thing about coconut is that it looks great, tastes heavenly, and hides so many decorating flaws. You can totally mess up on the frosting and if you sprinkle some coconut on top, nobody is ever going to notice. It is like the messy bun of cake decorating.
I use a box mix for the cupcakes, but I can’t stand store-bought frosting and refuse to touch it. So I used a variation of my friend Brenda’s recipe. You can’t do any fancy decorating with this frosting, but it is a super yummy alternative to the heavier buttercream frostings. Those can get a little too sickeningly sweet for me.
Salted Caramel Coconut Cupcakes Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 package Betty Crocker Triple Chocolate Fudge Supermoist Cake Mix, plus ingredients listed on package
- 8 oz. package of cream cheese (room temperature)
- 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 5 tbsp. Torani Dark Chocolate Sauce
- 8 oz. Cool Whip
- 1 cup shredded coconut
- 1/2 cup chopped salted caramel almonds
- 1/2 cup Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate chips
Directions
1. Make the cupcakes according to the instructions on the box and allow them to cool.
2. For the frosting, cream together the cream cheese, vanilla, chocolate, and powdered sugar. Then add the Cool Whip and blend well, making sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.
3. Frost the cupcakes with just a little dab of frosting. I like to frost my cupcakes by sticking all the frosting in a large gallon zip lock bag and cutting the tip off the corner. It makes it easy to squeeze it out onto the cupcake.
4. Top the cupcakes off with coconut, almonds, and chocolate chips.
