Applefest last week

Apple publishing have produced a bucket of little "500 of X" books. This recipe is from the cupcake one. They were delicious and disappeared in one sitting

Recipe : apple sauce & cinnamon cupcakes

makes 12

115g (4oz) unsalted butter, softened

115g (4oz) caster sugar

115g (4oz) self-raising flour

2 eggs

115g (4oz) unsweetened apple sauce

3/4 tsp cinnamon

50g (2oz) chopped pecans **

75g (3oz) sultanas ≠

1 small red eating apple, thinly sliced

2 tbsp granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 175˚C (350˚F / Gas mark 4). Grease a 12 cup muffin tin.

Place the butter, sugar, flour and egg in a bowl and beat with electric whisk until smooth, about 2 - 3 minutes.

Stir in the apple sauce, cinnamon, pecans and sultanas.

Spoon the batter into the cups. Lay the apple slices on top and sprinkle with a little sugar.

Bake for 25 minutes. Remove tin from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes

Remove the cupcakes and cool on a rack. Serve warm.

Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months :)

Ruth's notes :

** I used 1/2 pecans and 1/2 walnuts

≠ Zack wanted chocolate chips so I made up 2/3 sultanas and 1/3 chocolate chips = total weight of 75g

I tripled the recipe and it made 25 large cupcakes (filled to the top). I didn't have enough apple sauce to triple, but it doesn't seem to have made a massive difference.

This is Nigella's Apple Kuchen recipe. It's not bad but it's not amazing. The base took a lot of work - kneading and allowing it to rise overnight, etc etc. It came out lovely and bready which you then top with the apple, eggy-custard topping and the all-spice, slivered almonds, etc. It looks great but wasn't sweet enough or apple-y enough for me. I wanted something more sticky... more sweet throughout. Gotta keep trying.

half way through

eager little fingers

OK, so we've got to Friday and so far we've made wicked chocolate biscuits (Apple Publishing recipe), and Nigella's cupcakes/fairy cakes recipe last night. I decorated them with the blue liquid colouring mixed into the bog-standard butter cream icing. I have now decided that the liquid colouring is terrible - just like they told me at the cupcake decorating evening. It is such terrible quality. I ended up with blue-grey which you can't really fix. What a waste of icing! Thank goodness for "confetti" which Keith sprinkled ontop. I need to buy some colouring paste now and pronto! I have to make the cake & cupcakes tomorrow for the big day on Sunday.