Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Five Toppings

Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Five Toppings

My last cupcake recipe of the year! Can you believe I've done 53 of them altogether? I have no idea what I'll do with all my new-found free time! I am, however, really excited that I managed to stick with this and do a recipe every week. Go me!

Cupcakes:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

16 oz sweet potatoes, drained and mashed (I cooked down fresh sweet potatoes but if you need to save time canned works just as well, with the added bonus that you don't have to strain out the fiber!)

2/3 cup apple cider

1 tsp vanilla

3 cups flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp nutmeg (if you don't have nutmeg, allspice will substitute)

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices, and set aside.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time.

In another bowl, mix sweet potatoes, apple cider, and vanilla until smooth. If you used a fresh sweet potato, you will need to strain it through a sieve of some kind to get out all the fibers before you mix it in.

Alternate in the sweet potato and flour mixtures, beating until just blended. The batter will be a gorgeous golden-orange color.

Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 of the way full. 

Bake for 13 minutes, turn, bake for 13 minutes.

Let cool.

Makes 30.

Caramel Topping:

6 soft caramels

Spread the caramels very thin with your fingers, then lay them over top of the cupcakes.

Vanilla Topping

3 tbsp butter, soft

1 1/2 cups xxx sugar

Dash of vanilla

2-3 tbsp cream

Beat all the ingredients until smooth. Frost generously.

Chocolate Topping:

2 oz fine chocolate, semisweet

1/4 cup cream

Melt the chocolate in the cream using a double boiler. Remove from heat and stir until smooth. Let cool slightly before using. Drizzle over cupcakes.

Cinnamon Topping:

2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup xxx sugar

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Melt the butter and brown sugar together over low heat (between 2-4 on a stove dial). Add the cinnamon and stir until mixture begins to boil. Remove from heat and whisk in the xxx sugar.

Frost cupcakes immediately, as topping will set up fast.

Whipped Cream Topping:

Make or buy whipped cream (I cheated and bought because I was in a hurry). Top generously.

Cupcakes adapted from FoodNetwork.com.

And there you have it! Five different toppings, six cupcakes each. I couldn't decide which one would go best with the cupcakes when I was making them, so I decided to use all three. In retrospect, I think the cinnamon or the whipped cream would be best, but it's really up to you and what tastes good.

Also, I didn't have time to make them, but sprinkling some toasted pecans over the vanilla frosted cupcakes would have been divine!

I hope you enjoyed this foray into the world of cupcake baking; I definitely had a blast. Any future recipes will definitely be documented for this blog, but I'm not going to keep the same rigorous schedule at this point.

Thanks for reading!