Salted Caramel Apple Cupcakes - National Cupcake Week Pt 1

It's National Cupcake Week 15 -21 September so if you were looking for an excuse to make or eat cupcakes you need look no further!  I haven't made any cupcakes for quite a while, muffins, scones, tray bakes and sponge cakes have graced my table but not those delightful individual cups of cakey goodness topped with butter cream.

Those clever people at OXO Good Grips have sent me some natty little gadgets to help with creative cupcake construction, first up is the Cupcake Corer which with a simple twist removes a core from the centre of the baked cupcake ready for you to fill it with something delicious, jam, cream, lemon curd or in this case salted caramelised apple pieces.  You then push the cakey core out of the corer, cut it in half (to leave room for the filling) and add the top piece back to the cupcake before adding your icing. It worked really well although I did dig a little deeper with a spoon to get more filling in.

Second gadget I was provided with was the OXO Good Grips Cupcake Icing Knife which is small angled spatula that makes it really easy to top your cupcakes with butter cream or other icing.  I usually pipe my icing on but loved this more relaxed and rustic looking icing (also no icing bag palaver!).

To make things even easier I used Sugar and Crumbs Natural Flavoured Icing Sugar in 'Salted Caramel' flavour. 

Salted Caramel Apple Cupcakes 

For the cupcakes
125g soft brown sugar
125g soft butter
2 e3ggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
150g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

For the apple filling
1 medium apple
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tbsp water

For the Icing
75g soft butter
150g Sugar and Crumbs Salted Caramel Icing Sugar
1tbsp milk

A few pieces of fudge, chopped small to decorate.

Using a stand mixer beat the sugar and butter together, then add the eggs one at a time and finally the vanilla extract, beat the mixture for about 3 minutes until it is light and fluffy.  Sift the flour and baking powder into the butter mixture and beat until incorporated.   Spoon the mixture into eight paper case.  Heat the oven to 180C, bake for 20 -25 minutes until golden and when pressed on the top they feel firm.  Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

For the apple filling
Peel the apple and chop into even sized pieces, bearing in mind that they will have to fit into the cupcake.  Place the apple pieces sugar and water in a pan and cook on a medium heat until the sugar melts and starts to caramelise and  the apple starts to soften.  Using the corer or a teaspoon, cut a core from the centre of the cupcake and fill with a teaspoon of the apple mixture. Cut the core in half and replace the top over the apples mixture.

For the Icing
Beat the butter for a few minutes until light and fluffy, sift in the icing sugar add the milk and beat for a further few minutes until the sugar and butter is combined.  Spread the icing over the top of the cupcakes.
Decorate with chopped pieces of fudge.

Definitely worth making, the vanilla sponge gives way to the caramelised apples, enhanced by the Salted Caramel Icing and chewy fudge pieces.

Look out for National Cupcake Week part 2 later this week.

I was provided with the cupcake corer and icing spatula by OXO Good Grips and the Flavoured Icing Sugar by Sugar and Crumbs.  I was not paid for this review and all opinions are my own.