Vegan Mexican hot chocolate cupcakes and sea salted caramel chocolate cupcakes

Continuing the chocolate cupcake theme of National Chocolate Cupcake Day, here are some cupcakes from custom cupcake company Sweet Elites Vegan Cupcakes in Fresno, California, who can be reached at SweetElites at gmail.com and on their Facebook page. Descriptions and vegan cupcake photos below are from their blog.




Mexican hot chocolate cupcakes - chocolate, cayenne pepper, cinnamon and vanilla, filled with chocolate mousse




salted caramel dark chocolate cupcakes

I started with a moist chocolate cake substituting 1/2 of the soy milk with Kahlua coffee flavored liqueur. While waiting for the cupcakes to cool I made some caramel. Caramel was fun, it was a waiting game mostly with the candy thermometer. So as I was waiting for the caramel to get to it's specific needed temperature I watched "Who's That Girl" a classic 80's film starring Madonna- LOVE HER!!! So good times while making the caramel! Then it came time to start whippin up the frosting. I chose to do a dark chocolate frosting. It's a deep, dark satiny frosting and it has a wonderful sheen to it. So after putting the whole hot-mess together with the caramel center hiding under the piped peak of satiny chocolate frosting, I topped it off with some sea-salt. The salt draws out the caramel's (vegan) buttery taste and highlights the sweetness.