Another Perfect Fall Cupcake: Caramel Apple

Apples are one of the reasons I love fall so much. I know they're available all year round, but autumn has things like apple cider and caramel apples. Last year I had made caramel apple cupcakes, but I wasn't 100% happy with it. While looking for apple cake recipes this year, I kept coming across ones that essentially used an applesauce as the source of apple in the cake. I finally found one that sounded interesting that had you grate the apples and then caramelize them in a saucepan with butter and brown sugar. I made note that it was the recipe I wanted to use and exited the page. A couple days later when I was trying to figure out where the recipe was that I found, I could not remember what website it was on for the life of me. I still have been unable to find it, and I'm not entirely sure that I didn't dream this recipe.

Butter & brown sugar in the skillet

Working off that, I went about caramelizing the grated apples (I used Gala apples). I used my pumpkin spice recipe to work off. First I melted the butter in the pan and mixed in the brown sugar. I should have let the mixture caramelize a bit more, but it came out pretty well. The texture of the cake was really moist and less muffin-like than the one I made last year.

Grated apple after cooking it on the stove

For the frosting, I first made my own caramel and let it cool, I used it to make caramel frosting. I used the remaining caramel to swirl on top of the frosting. The caramel frosting complimented the apple cake really nicely. I'm hoping I have an excuse to make these again this autumn.

Finished cupcakes