These super cute Sticky Toffee Cupcakes are utterly delicious and devastatingly moreish! Make this quick and easy blender recipe as as mini cakes or cupcakes but don't miss the tasty as heck butterscotch toffee buttercream and sauce. Be warned, you'll want to put it on everything!
Add 150ml Double Cream, 65g Salted Butter, 65g Dark Brown Muscovado Sugar and 0.25 tsp Sea Salt Flakes into a small saucepan.
Heat gently and stir until everything is melted and a little thickened. This shouldn't take more than 5 minutes or so. Don't let it boil for more than a moment as it could end up tasting bitter.
Leave the sauce to cool and thicken whilst making the cakes. Pop into the fridge if it’s a particularly hot day.
Make the Cakes
Preheat the oven to 180c or equivalent. Pop a kettle on to boil.
Using sharp scissors, snip 175g Dried Dates into the jug of a blender or bowl of a food processor (not a stand mixer - you need blades here).
Cover with 275ml Boiling Water, put the lid on and leave the dates to soak for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, grease a 12 hole mini cake tin or line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.
After the dates have soaked, blitz them to a smoothish paste.
Add 50g Salted Butter, 1 tsp Sea Salt Flakes, 75g Demerara Sugar, 75g Muscovado Sugar, 2 Eggs and 1 tsp Vanilla Extract to the blender or processor. Blitz until smooth.
Pour the mixture into a mixing bowl and gently fold in 175g Self Raising Flour and 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda. The mixture will start to froth a bit, don't be concerned, this is the bicarb starting to work.
Fill the mini cake or muffin tins to a little below their rim. Pour the batter into a jug first if needed.
Pop into the oven for circa 20 minutes.
A skewer will never come out truly clean because of the sticky nature of the buns but you want to make sure there is no runny mix left in the middle and they will feel good and springy to the touch.
Leave the buns on a wire rack to cool. If using a tin without liners, leave them into the tin to mostly cool then use a plastic knife to release them. Take them straight out of the tin if using liners.
Make the Buttercream
Beat 80g Salted Butter with an electric whisk until lightly whipped.
Add 160g Icing Sugar and beat together. Whisk for 2 to 3 minutes until the buttercream is lovely and light.
Add 1/4 of the toffee sauce a little at a time and whisk in thoroughly. Make sure the sauce is totally cool before doing this. If the mix seems a little loose (it wants to be able to hold its shape), add extra icing sugar a bit at a time.
Leave the buttercream to the side somewhere cool whilst you fill the buns.
Assemble the Cakes
Take the remainder of the sauce and fill a piping bag with a small pointy nozzle.
Prod each (now cooled) cake from the top, in the centre, with the bag nozzle. If you don’t have a pointy nozzle, use a chopstick or similar to make a hole.
Squeeze about 3/4 teaspoon of sauce into the middle of each bun. Repeat until all cakes are filled.
Use a star piping nozzle and bag to pipe the buttercream evenly over the mini cakes.
If you don't want to pipe the buttercream, just spoon a good dollop (technical term alert) of the buttercream onto the top of each cake.
Drizzle the remaining sauce over the cakes in a gung-ho messy fashion. Serve.