Fleur de Sel Cupcakes

For Devil’s Food cupcakes:

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Cream the 2 sticks butter and 1 1/4 c sugar. Add eggs one at a time, but don’t overbeat.

Dissolve soda in the buttermilk. Alternate additions of flour and buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour.

Add vanilla. Melt the chocolate and stir into the batter.

Pour into cupcake wrappers and bake at 400 F for 20 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen cupcakes (or 3 9″ layers or 1 quarter sheet cake, if cupcakes aren’t your thing).

For the chocolate buttercream frosting:

Cream 1 stick butter in an electric mixer. Cream in vanilla and salt.

Cream in the powdered sugar and cocoa a little at a time. (I know it sounds like a lot of cocoa but trust me — you want to.)

Stir in the milk, a little at a time, until it’s the right consistency.

For the salted caramel filling:

Mix sugar and 1/2 c water in a large saucepan over medium to medium high heat.

Once sugar has dissolved, stop stirring. Continue to cook until it’s amber-colored.

I actually have found that’s it’s easier to pay attention to smell than color (partly because all of my pots have black bottoms). If it smells like caramel it’s good.

Note that this may take fifteen minutes or so, but once it gets close, watch it carefully as it can go from underdone to burned in no time, and there’s nothing to do with burned caramel but start over.

Once it’s colored to your nose’s liking, stir in the butter. (The sauce will foam up.)

Then stir in the cream and stir it until smooth.

Cool completely before using to fill cupcakes. Extra sauce keeps for a while in the fridge (not that it will be there long).

To assemble cupcakes:

In order to get a bunch of filling in the middle, I cut the tops off and fill them that way. You can also inject the filling, but I think it’s hard to get as much in that way.

To fill by cutting off the tops: cut a cone out of the top of the cupcake at about a 45 degree angle. Cut most of the pointed end off of the cone (oooh look — a snack!). Pipe filling in the remaining hole and put the top back on.

Top with chocolate buttercream frosting. Sprinkle lightly with fleur de sel. They keep fine at least overnight in the fridge (covered).