Rich low carb brownie cupcakes topped with sugar-free salted caramel frosting. Don’t blame me if you become obsessed!
When it comes to food, I definitely fall on the obsessive side of the spectrum. No, I don’t have any sort of compulsive eating disorder, and although I’ve had my pig-outs back in the day, I can regulate myself pretty well now. I am not that much of an emotional eater either, although a bit of chocolate is always cheering after a tough day. I also don’t have the need to track everything I eat, as I have figured out what works for me and I am accountable in the end to my blood glucose meter. It keeps me honest, and in those few times when I have not been honest, I can work in a bit of extra exercise to keep my glucose levels in check. So I am not obsessive in the way people normally think when they hear about food obsessions. But I do get utterly obsessed with particular flavours and tastes and I find them worming their way into my brain until they seem to occupy every inch of my grey matter and they are practically all I can think about. I don’t just think about them, I dream about them. If that’s not obsessive, I don’t know what is.
The funny thing is that I can have several obsessions going at once. Or several that are competing for my attention. Like children, they will battle it out and clamour for me to hear them, see them, play with them, jostling each other constantly for position. And, like children, when I do give one of them attention and bring them to the forefront and make them the star of the show, it’s never enough to satisfy them. Sometimes they go away, happy and appeased and leave me to lavish my attention on other ideas and flavours. But more often than not, they stick around, poking me every so often and saying “hey, not fair, I want to be your favourite again. Pay attention to ME!”. This happens particularly often when the results from said flavour experiments were really delicious and I can’t wait to find a new way to use it again.
Have I scared you yet? Are you ready to lock me away because my mind is such a jumble of obsessions about foods and flavours? I don’t blame you, really but let me just say this. You, my dears, are the beneficiaries of my obsessions with food so I suggest you don’t have me committed just yet. Because all that electric shock therapy might make me more normal, but it might take away my recipe creativity and then where would you be? No more recipes from All Day I Dream About Food – now that’s a scary prospect! So you will likely tolerate me and let me be, and just avert your eyes when you pass me on the street, muttering to myself about this flavour or that ingredient. You will think to yourself “well, she’s crazy but she’s harmless, really”. Good move, my friend, good move.
And then you will walk into your kitchen and bake yourself a batch of these low carb Brownie Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Sauce. Because my low carb salted caramel really is my current (or one of my current) obsessions. It’s all over this blog in many shapes and forms and every time I make something with it, I find myself more obsessed. It will not be satisfied, it will not go away, it will not leave me alone. It keeps coming back for more, demanding attention, demanding that I find new ways to use it and work it into recipes. And apparently I am more than happy to oblige.
Now here are some seriously fun gluten-free Rainbow Cupcakes from Flippin’ Delicious. I may have to try this with some low carb ingredients!
Keto Salted Caramel Brownie Cupcakes
Ingredients
Brownie Cupcakes:
- 1/2 cup almond flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup butter
- 3 oz unsweetened chocolate
- 3 tbsp cocoa powder
- 2/3 cup Swerve Sweetener
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 4 large eggs
Salted Caramel Frosting:
- 4 ounces cream cheese
- 3 tbsp butter
- 1 recipe Sugar-Free Caramel Sauce, (add the extra salt for salted caramel)
- 1/2 cup powdered Swerve Sweetener
- 1/2 tsp caramel flavouring or vanilla extract
Instructions
Cupcakes:
- Preheat oven to 325F and line a standard muffin tin with parchment paper or silicone muffin liners.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the almond flour, baking powder and salt.
- Melt the butter, chocolate and cocoa powder together in a medium saucepan over low heat, stirring until smooth.
- Stir in the sweetener, vanilla extract and stevia extract. Let cool 5 minutes.
- Whisk in the eggs, one at a time, until well combined. Stir in the almond flour mixture until well combined.
- Divide the batter among prepared muffin cups and bake 16 to 20 minutes, until cupcakes are just firm to the touch.
- Remove and let cool completely.
Frosting:
- In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and butter together until smooth. Beat in two thirds of the caramel sauce to combine, then beat in the sweetener and extract.
- Pipe or spread onto the cooled cupcakes and drizzle with the remaining caramel sauce.
Nutrition
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they look delicious!
So glad you found a healthy and productive outlet for your special kind of crazy-) these were most excellent, your cake recipes just keep getting better and better! The texture of the cupcakes was wonderful. I can’t comment on the fabulousness of the salted caramel without exposing my own obsession, just, thank you!
Well, I am glad to have company in my obsession!
Oh my gosh – these look amazing! I am a huge fan of caramel and that salted caramel dripping down is making me drool!
Carolyn, I’m right there with you on flavor obsessions! Chocolate (especially dark) is always at the top of my list. I have to remind myself to include other flavors in my recipes too; it’s basically an addiction. But if that’s the worst addiction I have, it can’t be that bad — right?? And I’ve been meaning to try a few salted caramel treats for a while, so thank you for reminding me with your gorgeous brownie cupcakes! You wouldn’t happen to have a few extras lying around, would you? Because I’d make them disappear in a heartbeat! 🙂 Already pinned!
I just made these and I love them! The batter seemed pretty loose compared to regular cake batter but they came out wonderfully. I did have to bake them for 22 minutes but that was probably my oven. I was especially impressed with the salted carmel! Wow! SO GOOD! In case it happens to anyone else, I had trouble making the xantham gum dissolve. I ended up having to strain the sauce to get all the little white lumps out. It was wonderful after I did that. This is definitely a recipe to keep!
Thanks, Loretta. I find for xanthan that if I sprinkle it over as I am whisking the sauce, it will dissolve in there. But you have to keep whisking and sprinkling at the same time. It gums up quickly!
You make low-carb and sugar-free look so damn good.
I have these in the oven baking as we speak! The flavor of the brownie is amazing! (Yes I’m one of THOSE…. Lol) But as I was trying to spoon it into the cupcake papers, it stared to take on the consistency of almost a mousse. Really thick, not pourable at all… I followed the directions to the T. Is this what it’s supposed to be like or did I do something wrong? I’m sure they’ll be out of the oven by the time this goes through, but I’m anticipating wonky misshapen cupcakes…
Mine is usually like pourable pudding consistency when I put it into the pan or the cupcakes. Not quite like mousse. Not sure what happened but for future reference, whisk in water, one tbsp at a time, until it smooths out. It sounds a little like your chocolate seized right at the end. Let me know how they turn out!
Alrighty – Update. 🙂 They are fabulous! I am not a fan of cake ANYTHING, but my girls love them and I was having serious sweet cravings today.
Anyway they baked up just fine. They were definitely not seized (I know what that looks like unfortunately. I do it plenty. 🙁 ) but just really thick. I will tweak it and see what happens. I have found that with a lot of things, the altitude makes a HUGE difference. We are over 5,000 ft. above sea level. Lol
Glad they worked! Sounds like a little extra liquid is needed, but you don’t want too much. So do go by the tbsp of water at a time to thin it out just a tiny bit.
Hi Carolyn!
I see the ad/link for the Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder below the recipe. Is that what you used? Or “regular” cocoa powder?
Thank you!
Sherrie Lee
I used the Hershey’s dark.
Salted caramel? Sign me up!
Haha! “She’s crazy but she’s harmless” should be a bumper sticker. My family would buy me one. Cooking obsessed is the best! 🙂
Yummy! My kids loved them. I would try not quite as much dark chocolate taste next time. The cake part was a little too rich for my family’s taste.
These look A-mazing! Thanks for sharing!
Am I missing the step that tells when to add the almond flour mixture to the chocolate mixture? Can you please advise?
Whoops, maybe. Let me check and fix. Sigh…I always re-read but I don’t always catch my own errors.
Fixed. Thanks for catching.
Oh I will most definitely be making these!! I love making cupcakes, and starting my LC/Keto diet back up makes me sad when I make cupcakes that I can’t eat! Now I just need to buy some Swerve… Either way, keep up the awesome work, I’ll keep following 🙂
These look delicious. I do have a question. I’d like to make the batter a little less “dark”. I know you LUV your dark chocolate; but, I’m more of a milk chocolate up to 65% dark chocolate kind of gal! Gasp! How would you suggest I make the adjustments to my taste – 2 or 3 oz. unsweetened chocolate or less cocoa? Thanks!
Hmmm, okay. I think you could definitely reduce the cocoa powder, maybe leaving it out altogether and adding more almond flour instead. Not a full 1/4 cup more, perhaps 2 or 3 tbsp? I wouldn’t mess with the amount of unsw. chocolate because it could change the consistency too much. But if you can find Lily’s milk chocolate, you could maybe sub in half of that for half of the unsweetened chocolate?
Thank you! I love Lily’s (totally addicted). I’ll try that, instead!
I omitted the 4oz unsweetened chocolate and mine came out perfectly milky chocolate. The only question I have is the bottoms looked wonky. Like had little craters in the middle of the bottom of the cupcake. Do you know why this happened?
Yes, it happened because you left out the chocolate, which adds bulk and fiber to the recipe.
These WILL be happening soon at my house! scrumdillyumptious! btw I’ve never liked “normal” people anyway. Boring!! 🙂
Carolyn, you make me laugh! a lot of the time your sharing before the recipe is just plain funny and entertaining. We are glad you have dreams of flavors and these recipes. The pictures of the recipe make me salivate, it looks so good. You do such a good job! Gifted by God I’d say.
I’m just grateful that I can spend my day dreaming about food because I know that you will eventually bring their low-carb, gluten-free versions into fruition…or even something better. Thanks for doing all the dirty work. 🙂
Can’t wait to try these! My question is with the Swerve sweetener and it listed as 5g carbs per teaspoon, how do you figure out that the total cupcake is 7.39 of carbs with so many cups of swerve in the frosting, sauce and cake?
I am having a hard time trying to comprehend how the carbs get whittled down to 7.39g carbs per cupcake. Just watching the carb count for my son which is 40-60 grams total per day. I so need a lesson on figuring out nutritional value as I myself altered some brownies and I added all the carbs up to 280g and divided by 12 servings and it came out so high since I used 3/4 of erythritol granular. Thanks in advance for the advice! 🙂
Swerve (and any erythritol) technically has carbs but they don’t affect most people’s glucose levels. I have stated very clearly that I don’t count them at all in the carb count. I’ve tested it on myself numerous times and they simply do not register on my glucometer.
what was it that Gene Wilder sang in “Willy Wonka” — a little madness now and then is relished by the wisest men…. thank you, Carolyn, for your obsessions. 😉