Lemon and Poppy Seed Cupcakes with popcorn and salted caramel sauce

When life feels too busy and stressful I did what I always do - bake and blog. As I'm going to be missing this evening's GBBO, I wanted to get some baking done today. Nothing to do with this weeks theme, but baking nonetheless.

This was a totally experimental bake - a twist on one of my fave cupcakes - lemon and poppy seed. I wanted to make it with gluten-free flour so used my favourite Free From Fairy flour and I was keen to try out Billington's new range of unrefined sugars so I used the Unrefined golden caster sugar in place of regular caster sugar.

And what better way to finish it off than with an extra crunch on top in the form of Propercorn popcorn - I used the Sweet and Salty variety to complement the sweetness of the cupcake and the saltiness of the salted caramel sauce.

Ingredients: (make 6)
55g coconut oil
75g Billington's unrefined golden caster sugar
1 egg
75g Free from fairy Self-raising flour
60g Free from fairy plain flour
45ml almond milk
15-30 ml lemon juice
half a tsp lemon zest
15ml 'buttermilk' made with 15ml almond milk, combined with a squeeze of lemon juice and left for 10 minutes
2 tsp poppy seeds
Propercorn Sweet & Salty popcorn

For the salted caramel sauce: (adapted from Livia's Kitchen)
50g coconut oil
90g cashew butter
70ml date syrup
pinch himalayan salt

Livia's kitchen uses 100ml maple syrup in place of the date syrup but I switched it to date syrup as I had a bottle of it open which needed using up.

Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to 160C. Line a muffin tin with 6 cake cases.
2. Mix together all of the cake ingredients until combined.
3. Pour into the cake cases and bake for 25 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.
4. Make the caramel sauce by gently heating all the salted caramel ingredients together until combined. Stir well. Leave to cool.
5. Spoon the salted caramel onto the cupcakes when they are cool and pop some popcorn on top.