Take a plain cupcake and turn it into a layered work of art this Thanksgiving!
Everyone loves those beautiful layered trifle desserts. This recipe creates individual layered desserts. Aren’t they fun?? I used butter pecan cupcakes with yummy caramel sauce, pecans and homemade butter cream frosting. They were delicious! You can use this idea with literally ANY combination of flavors though! Get all the flavors of a “filled” cupcake- but SO much easier to assemble!
Plus, you can wrap them up in cello bags with pretty fall ribbon and ties for an elegant holiday dessert!
Can you tell that I enjoyed taking pictures of these!?! Here is how we made them (printable recipe here):
INGREDIENTS: (Makes 24 cups of cake!)
Cake:
- One boxed cake mix (plus oil, water and eggs to make according to package). I used Betty Crocker’s Butter Pecan cake mix. It was AMAZING!!!!!!!
Caramel sauce:
- 32 unwrapped Kraft caramels
- 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
Buttercream:
- 4 sticks of butter (softened)
- 3 cups of powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla
- You will also need 4-5 pecan halves per cup- and small clear Solo cups!
DIRECTIONS:
- Make cake mix according to package and bake in 24 cupcake tins as directed by box (spray the pans with non-stick spray if you don’t use liners!). Cool.
- Make caramel sauce by placing caramels, butter (1 stick) and sweetened condensed milk into a saucepan.
- Melt over stove, stirring constantly, until caramels are entirely melted and smooth.
- Cool and place in a zip-top bag.
- Make buttercream by placing 4 sticks of softened butter, powdered sugar and vanilla in a large mixing bowl.
- Use hand mixer to beat on high for 2-3 minutes until light and fluffy.
- Place frosting in a zip-top bag that has been fitted with a decorating tip. Set aside.
- To assemble, cut a cupcake in half. Pipe a little bit of frosting into bottom of cup and press cupcake bottom in cup.
- Clip a corner off the bag of caramel and pipe along edge of cup on top of cupcake bottom.
- Press pecans into caramel along edges
- Pipe a little frosting between pecans (only use a little- mine had a touch too much icing in the middle- you could even skip this step and just have frosting on the bottom and top)
- Place top of cupcake on, pipe a little more caramel on top of cupcake, and pipe a swirl of frosting on top.
- Add a pecan and decorate as desired. I used cute icing leaves by Wilton that I found at Michael’s.
- You’ll want to wrap these up or put them in an air-tight container to keep them fresh. I chose cello bags and ribbon ties- and they made me smile
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These stay fresh for 3-4 days when covered.
My thoughts: These got RAVE reviews. Personally, I thought they were a little sweet and I wished I had used less frosting (plus I ran out of frosting with 3 to go!) so use a little less than pictured (or make a little more…if you really like frosting!!) One of my friends HIGHLY recommended crumbled bacon as a layer in these 
The GREAT news is that you literally can add anything you want to make these into your family’s favorite dessert! Enjoy!! ~r
Other yummy pecan and/or caramel treats here on Easybaked! (click on a photo to see the recipe)
