Chocolate Cuppies with Caramel IMBC

Dark Chocolate Fudge Cuppies

Caramel IMBC

Who needs a reason to bake?  I sure don't.  My in-laws came over today for grillin' and chillin'.  I've been itching to make another batch of IMBC, so now seemed as good of a time as any.  We all enjoyed these yummy numbers.

Stats:

• Duncan Hines' Dark Chocolate Fudge cake 
• IMBC with some melted caramel and cream
• 1M tip swirl

I complained to my husband.  I don't understand how people can make cupcakes without a huge mess.  I got batter everywhere trying to pour into the cups.  My arm ached from holding up the bowl.  I told him I've been making cupcakes since I was a kid and can't seem to get a good system going.  I don't understand how professionals do it.  He pointed out that I don't make cupcakes every day.  There must be some secret.  On TV I've seen bakers use ice cream scoops to transport batter from bowl to cup.  I couldn't find our ice cream scoop and I think my batter was way too runny to do that.  Maybe a pancake pourer ... that's a real thing, right?

For a while now I've had this bag of Caramel Bits, convenient little balls of caramel ready to melt.  After making IMBC normally (except for forgetting to add vanilla), I melted about 1/4 cup of caramel.  After nuking it in the microwave, stirring revealed it to be very thick and gummy ... which is, I guess, what caramel is like (hey, I've never done this before).  I was afraid it wouldn't mix into the icing ... there would be huge globs of sticky goodness in my silky smooth IMBC.  I poured in some heavy whipping cream to thin it out and it worked nicely.  It mixed in fabulously and gave the icing a lovely light, nutty color. Everyone loved the taste.  This is definitely a keeper.

Yesterday my family and I went to the cake supply store yet again.  I needed to pick up some cake dummies for the upcoming cake competition.  While I was there, I bought a 21" canvas decorating bag.  Ok, I didn't realize this at the time (the bag was folded up), but this thing is huge.  My father-in-law called it a dunce cap.

The whole batch of IMBC took up less than half of the bag.  I wasn't even sure how to wield this thing, but managed to ice the cupcakes without incident.  Here they are with a swirl using the 1M tip.  I didn't do the full-blown 1M swirl (requires 2 passes), which was a good thing because 1 batch of IMBC can't cover 24 cuppies with that technique.