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We so loved yesterday’s batch of Upside-down Caramel Apple Cup­cakes that I decided to make some more but this time right way up. I had a dozen plain spice cup­cakes left over to use.

This time around I peeled and chopped 2 large Pink Lady apples which are excel­lent for cook­ing with. They held their shape won­der­fully and didn’t break down when stirred into the caramel even once they were tender.

Caramel Sauce

10 oz unsalted but­ter
2/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 tea­spoon of nut­meg
1 table­spoon of cin­na­mon
pinch salt

Melt the but­ter over medium heat in a pan. Add the sug­ars and spices. I cooked this reduc­ing the heat a lit­tle until it bub­bled and didn’t look so watery on top. To test my caramel I place a tea­spoon full of the sauce on a glass plate and pop it in the freezer for a few min­utes to see how it’s set­ting up. You don’t want a hard tof­fee like caramel in your cup­cakes. When you get a nice soft but not runny con­sis­tency add the chopped apples and con­tinue to cook until the apples are ten­der… I wasn’t adding them to the oven this time since I was using cup­cakes I had made pre­vi­ously, so I needed to cook them a lit­tle longer.

Cut a small cap from the top of the cup­cakes by diag­o­nally insert­ing a sharp knife into the cup­cakes  from the edge towards the cen­ter about one inch.  Cut around until a small cap pops out.  You can see the shape of the well in the image below.  I trim off the point on these caps so they sit flat when I put them back on top of the caramel apple filling.

Add a heaped tea­spoon of the caramel apple fill­ing to the cup­cakes.  Replace the trimmed caps and sprin­kle with pow­dered sugar.  I think these looks so fes­tive and use col­ored cup­cake papers to suit the sea­son.  Great for those Fall par­ties, Thanks­giv­ing and other Hol­i­day festivities.

As always, if you have any ques­tions be sure and drop me a line.  I love hear­ing from you all and will do my best to answer in a clear man­ner…  Often I think my instruc­tions are clear but then again…

Cheers for now,

Colleen

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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.

Happy happy baking!

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Dobos Cake (/‘doboʃ/, Hun­gar­ian: dobostorta) is a famous Hun­gar­ian cake, invented by and named after a well-known Hun­gar­ian con­fec­tioner, József C. Dobos (1847–1924) in 1884. It is a five-layer sponge cake, lay­ered with choco­late but­ter­cream and topped with thin caramel slices. The sides of the cake are some­times coated with ground hazel­nuts, chest­nuts, wal­nuts or almonds but the orig­i­nal cake is with­out coat, since it was a slice of a big cake. Dobos’s aim was to make a cake that would last longer than other pas­tries, in an age when cool­ing tech­niques were lim­ited. The caramel top­ping helps keep the cake from dry­ing out. The cake is also often called ‘Dobos-torta’ or ‘Dobostorta’.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is my Dobos Torte…  We made ours rec­tan­gu­lar and topped it with a poured caramel that set hard but before it did I scored it with a knife into por­tioned pieces.

I will get the recipe entered tomor­row (Sat­ur­day 2/21)

The guys that work with my Hus­band really enjoyed this treat!