Winter Apple Cupcakes

We had a long weekend last weekend, so in the spirit of the lovely cool weather we've been having lately, I decided to make something wintery and delicious.

I just mucked around with my normal vanilla cupcake recipe (hey, I've found a gf cake recipe that doesn't go dry - I'm almost too afraid to try another one in case it goes all dry and horrible!) . I swear, next time I'll try a new recipe! Really!

125 g butter (room temperature)
2/3 C caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/4 C self raising gluten free flour
1 Tbsp milk
1/4 C Cream Cheese
1 1/2 granny smith apples, peeled, cored and diced into 1 cm pieces
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C. Line a 12 hole and a 6 hole cupcake tin with cupcake cases.
   
2. Squeeze the lemon over the chopped apples (this will stop them browning and adds a lovely zing)
   
3. Cream butter and sugar together until pale. Beat in vanilla.
4. Beat in 1 egg. Scrape down the sides. Beat in the second egg and scrape again.
5. Mix in the flour and cinnamon in 3 additions, alternating with the milk and cream cheese in 2 additions, mixing continuously.
6. Stir through the apples
   
7. Divide evenly into cupcake cases.
8. Bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Note: the batter doesn't quite cook evenly through the cake - the batter around the apples stays a bit wet even when the rest of the cake is cooked. If I was going to do it again, I'd either bake the apple cubes first to dry them out a bit, or increase the milk to 1/4 C and use 1/2 C dried apple pieces instead.


I was feeling particularly lazy this week (as you can probably guess by the fact it took me 4 days to post!) so I didn't ice them. They were so moist and sweet,