Light, soft, cinnamon sponges with apple, golden delicious crumble, cinnamon buttercream, and even more crumble. Apple crumble cupcakes, perfect for Autumn.
Preheat your oven to 180ºc/160ºfan and line a 12 hole muffin tray with large cupcake cases/muffin cases or 12 baking cups.
Peel and core the apples, cube the apples into about 1cm (small) pieces.
Put the apples into a bowl, and cover with the 25g of light brown sugar. Mix it up so all the apple pieces are covered and leave to the side.
Crumble
Make the crumble mixture. Rub together the sugar, flour and butter until the mixture resembles bread crumbs, leave to the side for now.
Cupcakes
Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the flour, eggs, and cinnamon and beat until smooth. Fold through the apple mixture and spoon into your cupcake cases. Because of the apple, you will probably get more than 12 out of the batch.
Sprinkle on a layer of the crumble mixture (only about 1/2cm worth per cupcake) and then bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until baked through!
Once baked, transfer to a rack to cool completely. After they’re out of the oven, sprinkle some of the spare crumble mixture onto a baking tray and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until its lightly coloured (180ºc). Leave the crumble mixture to cool.
Buttercream
Beat the butter for a few minutes until really light and supple. Add in the icing sugar 1/3 at a time and beat fully after each incorporation.
Add in the cinnamon, vanilla and 1-2tbsps of boiling water and beat for about 5 minutes until really light and fluffy.
Topping
Using a 2D closed star piping tip, pipe the buttercream onto the cupcakes. Sprinkle on some of the cooked crumble mixture and maybe an extra sprinkle of cinnamon, and some sprinkles and enjoy!
When buying the apples, buy above the 250g as thats the chopped and peeled weight. You need to go for about 400g worth unpeeled, to make sure that its enough!
Some oven temperatures can vary even if you set it to the ‘correct temperature’. You can tell if a cake is well and truly done by testing them with a skewer, and seeing if it comes out clean. HOWEVER, you need to also listen to the cake, if its still making a crackling/bubbling sound then its not quite done. Keep baking till that sound goes away!
I reeeeally would recommend using COOKING apples for this rather than regular eating apples because of the length of time the cake is baking for. If you used regular apples, there is a chance they’d turn to mush, and then the cake wouldn’t bake well either. The lovely bright green cooking apples are the ones you’re after!
You could also use a ready made crumble mix if you like as well as it does save time, but you’ll still need to bake it on top of the cake in the same way, and bake the spare in the same way as well!
This cake will last in an airtight container for up to 3 days!