Upside-down Caramel Apple Cupcakes

by Colleen | August 16, 2009 11:47 am

You might think I’m a lit­tle pre­ma­ture in bak­ing an item so suited to Fall weather, but there is some­thing won­der­ful about the fra­grance of cooked apple and cin­na­mon that I just couldn’t resist.

When the air con­di­tioner is on and it’s over­cast it’s easy to over­look the fact that the tem­per­a­ture out­side is actu­ally in the upper 90s.

I saw a photo of an upside-down caramel apple cup­cake on Flickr made by 4GoodnessCake and thought they looked easy enough to make, which they were.  For some rea­son I decided to chop up my apples when the ones I saw online had used a ring of apple.  The ring would have been far eas­ier to get out of the pan I’m sure and prob­a­bly would have made a more tra­di­tional flat bot­tom shape.  I had to scoop out some of the apple chunks and repo­si­tion them on the cup­cakes.  But as they cooled they set up well and stayed where they were put.

I used a recipe for Applesauce-Spice Cake from my Betty Crocker Best of Bak­ing book.  The spicy cake with added apple­sauce was great cou­pled with the cooked apple I placed into the pan before the cake mix. Step 1 — Cook the Apples This recipe test yielded enough bat­ter for two dozen cup­cakes but I only had enough cooked apples for one dozen so the remain­der are just plain old spice cakes.

• Peel and chop into small chunks two apples of your choice.  I used Granny Smith because they hold together well when cooked and that is what hubby bought back with him from the store so lit­tle choice really!
• In a skil­let I melted 1 cup of unsalted but­ter, to which I added 1 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 tea­spoon of cin­na­mon and 1/4 tea­spoon of nut­meg and just a pinch of salt to bring out the flavours.
• Add the chopped apples (or rings if you pre­fer) and cook just until they begin to get tender.
• Scoop about 1  table­spoon of this mix­ture into the bot­tom of a greased cup­cake pan.

Step 2 — The Cake Bat­ter
Seri­ously peo­ple, if you want to use a box spice cake mix — DO IT! I’m all about con­ve­nience and some­times we just don’t have the time to do it from scratch. Yeah, yeah, I know purist bak­ers are rolling their eyes…

2  1/2 cups of all pur­pose flour
2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of but­ter
1  1/2 cups of apple sauce (I pre­fer the unsweet­ened nat­ural)
1/2 cup of water
1  1/2 tsp of bak­ing soda
1  1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp ground cin­na­mon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground all­spice
1/4 tsp bak­ing pow­der
3 eggs

Pre­heat oven to 350F (180C) degrees.  Beat all the ingre­di­ents together in your mixer on low speed, scrape the bot­tom to ensure no dry ingre­di­ents are sit­ting down there for about 30 sec­onds.  Then beat on medium high for around 3 mins until bat­ter looks rel­a­tively smooth.

You can now add this bat­ter on top of your cooked apples in the cup­cake pans, fill­ing each hole to about 2/3 full.  I use a quar­ter cup mea­sure to try and get some uni­for­mity in my cup­cake size.

Bake for around 20 min­utes or until the cake springs back when touched with a fin­ger­tip.   They will look brown due to the spice cake mix but don’t let them get too dark.   When cooked, cool in the pan for approx­i­mately ten to fif­teen min­utes.  I used a large spoon to remove mine from the pan, scoop­ing up the apple and sauce that stayed in the pan.

Have your cup­cake papers sit­ting on the cool­ing rack and place each cup­cake apple side up in the papers.  I driz­zled on any syrup and apple left in the bot­tom of the pan.  Let cool.  You can dec­o­rate any way you wish.  These were good the next day cold out of the refrig­er­a­tor or heated in the microwave with a scoop of vanilla ice­cream and some caramel sauce.

If you have any ques­tions do not hes­i­tate to com­ment here or email me[1].

Happy happy baking!

Source URL: http://www.cakeartisan.com/2009/08/upside-down-caramel-apple-cupcakes/

---