Toffee Crunch Cupcakes

Father Day and summer officially begins and the world is warm and green and Hartford is doing its best impression of a pleasant place, which it manages for approximately twelve weeks a year before reverting to its true personality of gray misery. I will take the twelve weeks. I will take them and fill them with grilled meat and cold drinks and the sound of my family eating in the backyard.

For Father Day I made Eduardo his favorites — pernil, tostones, arroz con gandules, and a tres leches cake because Eduardo has a weakness for tres leches that borders on addiction. The cake is three milks — evaporated, condensed, and heavy cream — soaked into a sponge cake until it is dense and wet and sweet in a way that makes grown men close their eyes and sigh. Eduardo ate two pieces. Then he ate a third when he thought I was not looking. I was looking. I am always looking.

I thought about Papi. I think about him every Father Day. Miguel Delgado, dead seven years now, and the thinking has gotten gentler with time. Not softer — gentler, which is different. I do not soften the memory. He drank. He embarrassed us. He was unreliable. I do not pretend otherwise. But I am gentle with the memory now because I understand, at fifty-one, what I could not understand at twenty-one: that people are whole things, not half things. Papi was a whole person — the drunk and the singer, the absent and the present, the man who forgot and the man who remembered. I carry him, all of him, and the carrying has gotten gentler because I am tired of being angry and anger takes energy that I would rather spend on cooking.

Miguel Jr. is going to be a father someday. I look at him and Jenny and I see it — the house, the children, the Sunday dinners. He will be a good father. He will be the father Eduardo is, not the father Papi was. He chose Eduardo template and I am grateful for this with a gratitude that has no bottom.

Called Mami. I said, Happy Father Day, Mami. She said, Your father would have loved today. The sun, the food, the family. He would have been the loudest one at the table. I said, I know, Mami. He would have been loud and drunk and beautiful and impossible, and we would have loved him, and the food would have been good, and that would have been enough. She said, It was always enough, Carmen. It was always enough. We ate well. We were together. The rest was noise. My mother, seventy-nine, forgiving a dead man over the phone. This is what love does. It forgives. Eventually, it forgives.

Tres leches is Eduardo’s cake, and it will always be Eduardo’s cake, and I will keep making it for him every Father’s Day until one of us cannot. But after a day like that one — Mami on the phone, the sun still warm at six in the evening, Miguel Jr. and Jenny in the backyard looking like the future — I wanted something I could make for everyone else, something to bring to the table on an ordinary weekend and say, without saying it, that we are still here and still sweet. These toffee crunch cupcakes are that cake: simple enough to make on a Saturday, rich enough to feel like a celebration, and covered in enough butter and toffee that even the loudest man at the table would have to stop talking to eat one.

Prep Time: 25 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour (includes cooling) | Servings: 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk, room temperature
3/4 cup toffee bits (such as Heath), divided
For the caramel buttercream:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
3 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons caramel sauce, plus more for drizzling
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
For the topping:
1/2 cup toffee bits
Flaky sea salt, for finishing (optional)

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners and set aside.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl using a hand mixer or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened butter and granulated sugar together on medium-high speed for 3 to 4 minutes until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides as needed.
Add eggs and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and mix to combine.
Alternate dry and wet. Reduce mixer speed to low. Add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk in two additions (flour — milk — flour — milk — flour), beginning and ending with flour. Mix just until no dry streaks remain — do not overmix.
Fold in toffee. Using a rubber spatula, fold in 1/4 cup of the toffee bits.
Fill and bake. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared liners, filling each about 2/3 full. Sprinkle the tops with the remaining 1/2 cup toffee bits from the batter portion. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the tops are just golden. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
Make the caramel buttercream. Beat the softened butter on medium-high speed for 3 minutes until very pale and creamy. Reduce speed to low and gradually add the sifted powdered sugar, mixing until incorporated. Add the heavy cream, caramel sauce, vanilla, and salt. Increase speed to medium-high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until the frosting is smooth, fluffy, and spreadable. Taste and adjust salt or caramel as desired.
Frost and finish. Pipe or spread the caramel buttercream generously onto each cooled cupcake. Scatter the remaining 1/2 cup toffee bits over the tops, drizzle with additional caramel sauce, and finish with a pinch of flaky sea salt if using. Serve the same day for the crunchiest toffee topping, though cupcakes keep covered at room temperature for up to 2 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Toffee Crunch Cupcakes — For the Fathers We Carry With Us