Spending 2 hours making a dessert is more than I’m usually willing to commit to. But if you’ve got a special birthday party, you’re trying to get a raise, or you really pissed somebody off… these may do the trick.
I doctored a chocolate cake mix with cayenne pepper and cinnamon and turned store-bought dulce de leche into a super yummy frosting. And there’s sprinkles. Cupcakes are NEVER FINISHED UNTIL THERE ARE SPRINKLES. Life lesson, folks.
Give it a try! It takes 2 hours… but at the end you have cupcakes! That’s probably a better outcome than you’ll get with almost anything else you can spend that time doing, amiright?

Cook Time | 1 hour |
Passive Time | 1 hour |
Servings |
cupcakes
|
- 1 box chocolate cake mix
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 1/4 cups whole milk
- 1/2 cup greek yogurt
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 3 eggs
- 8 oz cream cheese
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 8 oz dulce de leche (1 jar from Trader Joe's)
- 2 cups powdered sugar sifted
- sprinkles
- fleur de sel
Ingredients
Cupcakes
Frosting
|
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- Put all cupcake ingredients into a bowl and beat for 30 seconds. Scrape down sides of bowl and beat for another 2 minutes.
- Fill cupcake pan with liners and divide batter to make 24 cupcakes. Bake according to box directions, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.
- Remove cupcakes from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.
- Beat cream cheese and vanilla until smooth. Add dulce de leche and beat until well combined. Add powdered sugar and beat until smooth. Put frosting in a piping bag or zipper bag and store in refrigerator to firm up until ready to use.
- When cupcakes are completely cool, snip off the end of the bag of frosting to create a hole approximately 1/2 inch in diameter. Pipe a swirl of frosting onto each cupcake.
- Sprinkle frosting with sprinkles of your choice (I used cinnamon sprinkles and chocolate crunchy pearls). Sprinkle with a small amount of fleur de sel or other flaky sea salt.