Chocolate Pretzel Cupcakes with Chocolate Butter Cream

As I've mentioned before, I love the combination of sweet and salty. I recently saw a recipe for pretzel cupcakes on cupcakeproject.com and I had to try it out. I didn't use her cake recipe but I borrowed her recipe for the pretzel crust. After this I may want to give everything I bake a pretzel crust. IT'S PHENOMENAL!! To make it here is what I did:

2 cups of crushed pretzels-not pulverized tho, u want some chunks

3 heaping tablespoons of dark brown sugar

1 stick softened butter

Combine everything and line 24 cupcake lines with the mixture- then bake at 350 for 10 minutes. 

Here is where I messed up slightly, I tend to multi-task too much and I totally forgot to set the the timer for 10 minutes so they were a little over cooked but still ok, I probably only left them in 3 minutes too long.

Then onto my chocolate cake***

1 1/2 sticks softened butter

2 cups sugar

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 ounce melted unsweetened chocolate

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

3 eggs

2 cups AP flour

1 1/2 cups milk

I poured the batter into the pretzel crust-lined cupcake papers- not too full, i'd say about half an ice cream scoops worth. I baked these at 350 for 18 minutes. (I had a little batter left over so when these were done I baked 3 more plain chocolate cupcakes) I let them cool and then made my chocolate butter cream**

1/2 stick softened butter

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips, melted

2 cups powdered sugar 

2 tbsp milk

I topped each cupcake with a cute waffle pretzel so people knew what to expect.

Here is a picture so you can sort of see the crust- Like I said, I over baked the crusts so they got a little too caramelized. I'll make sure to time it better next time so you can see it better and it isn't so dark.

The pretzels stayed crunchy though and the caramelized brown sugar in it gives it a sort of toffee bite. YUM!