Salted Caramel Chocolate Donuts

My husband loves desserts and is always finding new ones for me to make for him, which I love. He loves chocolate and caramel and anything in between, so this was perfect. It was super easy to put together, looks impressive, oh yeah and the drawback, it makes the house smell like the state fair! These donuts are so yummy and decadent that you will only need one to fix your craving!
Source:The Way to His Heart

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups of Flour, plus more to coat the work space
1 cup of Cocoa Powder
2 teaspoons of Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt
1 cup of Sugar, plus more to coat the donuts when finished
3/4 cup of Buttermilk
4 tablespoons of Butter, melted
2 Large Eggs
30 Soft Caramel Squares, unwrapped
5-6 cups of Vegetable Oil

Directions:
First, in one large bowl whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together.

In another bowl mix the sugar, buttermilk, melted butter, and eggs. Combine the dry mixture into the wet mixture. If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook this is the perfect time to use it. It will be done in one minute or less. If you do not, mix by hand until the two mixtures are thoroughly combined and you cannot see any of the dry mixture.

Next, coat a working space with flour. Put your dough onto this space and pat the top of the dough with a little flour and start rolling it out. Roll it out until it is about 1/3 of an inch. Use a circle cookie cutter, one with a 2 1/2 inch diameter. Roll the scraps back up and re-roll so you get every bit of this great chocolate dough!

Place one caramel square into each cut cookie and roll it into a ball in your hand. Put all of these balls in a bowl to keep them from running around.

Place about 1 cup of sugar into a small bowl for coating the donuts when they are done cooking.

Place 5-6 cups of oil into a shallow pan and heat the oil until it is 350 degrees. Fry each ball for 4 minutes, rotating to get all sides.

Place each ball onto a plate lined with paper towels to soak up additional oil and let them cool for 4 minutes. Once the donuts are cooled roll them in the sugar and serve immediately!

The caramel will harden so put in the microwave for 20-25 seconds to melt the caramel again for leftovers! Enjoy!