Apple and cinnamon cupcakes

So this week I was ambitious and created my own cupcakes. Apple and cinnamon is a known combination of flavours, and cake is good. So even if this recipe had gone wrong it still would have tasted nice.

So the filling is an apple puree, which I have used when making an apple tart. So get one apple and cut it up into small pieces. You can take off the skins of the apple if you like but they mostly boil down and become soft Put this into a small saucepan, ideally one that has a lid. Fill the saucepan with water and then add two tablespoons of sugar. I like using brown sugar because it makes it more caramel tasting. Then put it on the hob on a low temperature. Keep tabs on it and if the water starts to get too low before it starts to look like a puree then put in some more water.

When it starts to look more like a syrup then add a few drops of lemon juice. Just before you would take it off the heat add a tablespoon of apricot jam, which just brings it all together more.

Once done take it off the heat and allow it to cool.

Next make the cake. I fancied making cinnamon cake mixture but decided to leave it, but I am sure it would work. Instead just make a normal cake mixture.

I did 150g of butter, 150g of sugar (white sugar this time) and cream together. Then I only had one egg so mixed the egg with 100ml of milk. If you have more eggs then just use two eggs and forget about the milk. Then put this into the sugar and butter and mixed together. Then added 150g of self raising flour. If you need more moisture then just add some more milk as you are mixing until you get a dropping consistency.

Then put the mixture into cupcake cases - this mixture made 12 cakes. Put them in the oven at gas mark 5 for 20 minutes.

During this time I made the icing. I had one tablespoon of butter, and then three tablespoons of icing sugar. Added one teaspoon of cinnamon powder to flavour the butter cream icing. To make butter icing I find it best to use an electric mixer, it will spew icing sugar everywhere so be prepared to make a mess and to inhale a lot of icing sugar too, but it makes really nice icing, really quickly. If it looks too sloppy then add more tablespoons of icing sugar. I think I ended up using about six.

Once the cakes are done, take them out the oven and allow them to cool.

Once cool use the handle of a teaspoon to poke a hole in the tops of the cakes. Try and keep it neat but at the same time make sure you can poke lots of your apple puree mixture into the cakes.

Then put about a teaspoon of the apple mixture into each hole in the cakes. If there is mixture left over then fit it into the cakes where you can until it is all gone.

Then put a tablespoon of the cinnamon icing onto the tops of each cake and that is it done.