Spicy Apple Cupcakes

My friend gave me a bag of granny smith apples from her tree. I usually semi stew them and put into small zip lock bags in the freezer for the winter months. I also used them to make these apple and hazelnut cupcakes. The recipe is adapted from a recipe in Cuisine magazine a few years ago. That recipe was for a macadamia and nutmeg crumb cake. I didn’t have any macadamias and was too lazy to grate nutmeg, so my cakes became Hazelnut and clove apple cakes.

The recipe was a very easy one – melt butter, add to dry ingredients, save some of the mixture for the crumb topping and then mix in the rest of the ingredients. The hardest part was peeling and coring the apples. The cakes turned out lovely and moist and quite spicy. Because I made cupcakes rather than one large cake, I cut the apple into quite small pieces to ensure that they cooked through in the shorter baking time. These are a deliciously easy way of incorporating apples from the tree in the backyard into something for the tins.



And, speaking of cupcakes, I was practising my straight line sewing in the weekend (don’t look too carefully!) and made these napkins for my Mum from some leftover fabric she gave me to play with. Hopefully she will be able to use them when my niece comes for dinner.

Nutmeg and Macadamia Apple Crumb Cakes (adapted from Cuisine)

185g flour
100g brown sugar
85g sugar
1 tsp ground cloves
75g butter melted and cooled
1 tsp baking powder
½ c buttermilk
1 egg
1 granny smith apple, peeled, cored and chopped into small pieces
½ c toasted hazelnuts
1 tbsp sugar extra
1 tsp cinnamon

· Mix flour with sugars and cloves, stir in butter until mixture resembles crumbles
· Reserve 2 tbsp of the mixture for the topping
· Add baking powder, buttermilk and egg and beat with an electric mixer until smooth
· Fold in chopped apple, then spoon into 10 cupcake cases
· Combine the reserved crumb with the chopped hazelnuts and extra cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle over the top of the cakes
Bake at 180c for 18-22 minutes or until a sharp knife inserted in the middle comes out clean