Skip to main content

Spiced Apple and Caramel Cupcakes

With the start of September, Autumn is just round the corner meaning a return to cosy jumpers, richer foods and in baking terms warmer flavours. Apples, spices and autumn go hand in hand so today I have whipped up some spiced apple cupcakes.




This is basically a two pot recipe and very quick to make, handy when you are having to fit baking around baby naps!

Ingredients

135g dark muscovado sugar
65g caster sugar
115g melted butter
2 large eggs
80ml whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 large apple peeled and chopped, I used a cooking apple which gives a slightly tart taste to offset the sweetness of the cakes
1 portion of caramel, either from the tin or home made.

Method

Preheat your oven to 180/ 170 degrees fan assisted. Line a 12 hole cupcake tin with cases and put aside.

Mix together the butter and sugars until well combined. Whisk the eggs in, one at a time and then the milk and vanilla. Whisk well and set aside.

In a second bowl stir together all of the dry ingredients (apart from the apple). Slowly mix the wet ingredients into the dry bowl, as we have used muscovado sugar there will be some lumps in this batter. When fully combined throw in the chopped apple and give a final stir.

Fill the cupcake cases two thirds of the way up and bake for around 18 minutes. Use the skewer test to check if they are done, but be careful as if you hit a piece of apple the skewer will come out clean so test a couple of times.

Allow to cool fully and either eat as they are, or alternately you could finish them with some caramel or toffee flavoured buttercream to give some extra sweetness, or add some caramel into the centre of the sponges. I have done this using a syringe tool but if you don't have one of these slice a round of cake from the top, add some caramel then put the cut out sponge back into the hole..

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pasteils de nata - custard tarts

Pastry week on the Great British Bake Off saw Paull Hollywood set custard tarts as the technical challenge and I thought I would give them a go, seeing as I have never attempted them before! I own Paul's cookbook which has the recipe in, and it can also be found on the GBBO website. These two recipes vary slightly - in the book Paul doesn't make the rough puff pastry but uses shop bought (which I would normally do.) This being a Bake Off challenge though I decided to use the recipe they followed in the tent. The result - delicious buttery pastry filled with golden creamy custard. I ate 3 in one sitting! The tarts are quite fiddly and leaving the pastry to cool between rolling is essential to get the decent lamination and signature swirl on the bottom, so you will need to set aside a good couple of hours in total. As a side note, I found that I had a lot of left over custard - either I didn't make my tarts big enough or the recipe is rather generous with the por...

After Eight minis by Fantasy Cakes

Father Christmas clearly knows me well, as under the tree I had a new cake recipe book waiting; Fantasy Cakes by Angela Romeo and it is such a treat for the eyes to browse, and stomach for the wonderful cakes you could bake. It is a very clever book in that it has the standard cake recipes at the start which are used throughout the book. These so far have been so simple to throw together, which is very handy as I can leave the baby playing for 10 minutes to whip the cake up. You can order the book here , and I highly recommend it if you want to try some beautiful centre pieces or show stoppers. The first cake I tried is the After Eight minis, great as all the family were round to gobble up the end result.  This After Eight recipe took a while to assemble and create the individual elements however they can all be done in advance and individually rather than sitting down for a good couple of hours stretch. I had to alter the recipe slightly as I ran out of self raising fl...

Malteser Christmas Pudding Cake

Hello! Doing the rounds at this festive time is a Malteser Cake in the style of a Christmas pudding, and one of my friends has challenged me to make this, so being one to thrive at the thought of a challenge I gave it a go! I basically have made a chocolate cake in a Christmas pudding bowl, sliced and iced then covered in Maltesers. Pretty simple but looks fairly impressive.  This recipe will make you the Christmas pudding and some spare batter, so you can pop in 12 cupcakes as well! Ingredients: 350g plain flour 350g caster sugar 50g cocoa powder 1 tsp bicarb of soda 150g dark chocolate chips 435ml vegetable oil 1 cup of buttermilk (sour cream can be used as an alternative) 3 large eggs For the icing: 350g icing powder 250g softened butter Cocoa powder to flavour Two large share packs of Maltesers Melted white chocolate A couple of cherries Method: Preheat your oven to 170C. Line a 12 hole muffin tin and grease a Christmas Pudding shaped bowl. I ...