Apple Pie Cup Cakes

Donna Hay is an Australian chef who is a bit of a god at making cooking and baking easy for the average every day person. I have used many of her recipes and have lots of her cook books.

She publishes a magazine, that I am lucky enough to have a subscription to this year, and in it she turns you into a gourmet chef. I have hardly had a recipe fail. She is good, you get the picture.

Last year she did a "Couture Cup Cake'' section in her magazine. It had lots of great ideas for cup cakes but being a lover of the ultimate comfort food, apple pie, the apple pie cup cakes caught my eye.

I have tried different versions on an apple cup cake but personally had not been impressed by any of them because they called for pureed apple and that is too subtle a flavour for me. I like the big chunks, I like to be able to see the apple, I like texture in a cup cake. I had been meaning to go back to the different recipes I had tried and modify them to accomodate "chunky" apples, but get too busy trying the next flavour to go back.

Luckily, this recipe has delivered the goods. Although, next time I would still double the apple quantity. I love apple, I think I have gone on enough.

This recipe calls for caramelised apple, something I had not done before, usually I just stew it with some lemon, sugar and spice and call it done. This one used sugar and butter to caramelise and was lovely.

The cup cake mix was probably close to a vanilla cup cake mix and once the apples have cooled you put a spoonful on top of the mix before baking.

While baking, most of the apple disappeared or sank down into the cake, which was a surprise to me and a reason I would add double next time.

The cake was then iced with a butter, icing sugar and cinnamon mix. It had about a 80% butter to 20% icing sugar mix to it and that made me nervous. I am used to much more icing sugar and much less butter. I once tried my blogging friend's recipe for Swiss Meringue Buttercream which called for a lot of butter and, to me, it just came out like whipped butter. I threw it all away and vowed to try it again one day with organic butter.

I am yet to do that, but I did give this one ago, despite my misgivings. I still felt that it tasted too buttery but I decided that maybe it was just personal taste, given my sweet tooth, and that I should let the "jury" decide. So, I piped it on, albeit a bit conservatively compared to normal. It was a particularily warm day and my air conditioner had not been turned on so they were a bit sloppy. I was short on time as I wanted the tasters to get them fresh and I had to get kids to and from school, so I persisted and sprinkled cinnamon on top.

 Have a look at the cross section, I think it says it all, YUM!

As my girlfriend, Caz says, I don't know if it is the new machine or me but this last week the cakes have been "the ones", very gourmet or as my other girlfriend, Tammie, says "Amazing".

Oh how I love cup cakes.

I have the Health Department, or Environmental Health as they are called these days, coming next week to inspect the kitchen as I hope to start increasing the "hobby" business, so I may be too busy cleaning to bake and blog. Oh how I hope not, I will miss it. As most of you know I am obsessive compulsive about cleaning so I would like to think that I don't have to do much to comply.

Wish me luck....................