Baking Challenge Week 34 - Carving - Cardamom Tea Cupcakes with Caramel Filling

Cardamom is my favorite spice, I know I've said that before.  So it's no surprise that when I was out of town and happened to wander into a Middle Eastern grocery to check for hard-to-get-here spices, I passed through the tea aisle and grabbed this off the shelf as soon as I saw it.  (Didn't hurt that it was $9 for 500g of loose tea.  That's a steal!)

I wanted to do a simple carved cupcake for this challenge, because, as I've said before, it's hard to feel motivated to do cakes when they'll spoil before my husband and I can eat them all.  Cupcakes are much easier to give away if staleness threatens!

Also, I've never carved cake before and didn't want to get in over my head.

I found an Earl Grey cupcake recipe and simply substituted my cardamom tea.  The cupcakes themselves came out beautifully, and were very easy to carve.

 I just pretended I was hulling some extremely large strawberries.

And of course, I ate the pieces I carved out.  The cake is positively scrumptious--I'm going to try this recipe with other teas in the future, I'm sure.

I had plans to make a caramel frosting I'd run across while looking for the cupcake recipe, and I tried it....and it's not frosting.  I won't link the recipe, but I followed it exactly, both proportions and procedure, and it's just not frosting.  It's a glaze, at best.  It would not thicken.

So instead of piping a nice dollop of frosting into my hulled cupcakes, I spooned the glaze in, and am waiting for it to harden enough to risk eating a cupcake without oozing everywhere.  Fingers crossed!