Apple Spice Cupcakes

I had the urge for some apple juice this morning.  Having no juice, but some apples, I pulled out the much neglected juicer and got to work.  Satisfied with just a small glass for both Jeff and I there was some juice left and of course, all the pulp.  I core the apples before putting them through the juicer so the pulp is usable.  We’re going to meet some friends later this morning and I figured I could do something with the pulp as a treat for them.  I pulled out my trusty Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts and modified their Apple Spice Cupcake recipe to fit what I had on hand.

Apple Spice Cupcakes

• 1 Cup of Apple Pulp (remove any big chunks of skin, etc.) or 1 Cup shredded apple
• 2 Cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 2/3 Cup butter (I used salted if you use unsalted you may want to add a little salt to the recipe)
• 1 Cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 apple juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line muffin tin with papers or grease.  Sift dry ingredients together.  Cream butter and sugar until light.  Add eggs one at a time, add vanilla.  Alternate the flour and apple juice into the creamed mixture until well combined.  Fold in the apple pulp.

Pour batter into muffin tin.  Bake 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  Let cool before frosting.

Frosting: The recipe in the book had an apple cream cheese frosting that used apple juice concentrate, which I never have on hand, so I just used a basic cream cheese frosting which worked wonderfully with a few ground walnuts sprinkled on top.  I was super generous with the frosting mainly because I made enough to frost about 11 cakes,  I always make too much frosting not sure why I do that.  However, I did use a light whipped cream cheese (because that’s what was in the fridge), so that makes it ok, right?

Notes: I ended up with 14 cupcakes, however 12 would have been just fine if I had filled the cups almost full before baking.  They didn’t rise as much as I had expected so be generous in those cups.  Next time, I might add a touch of maple syrup instead of the vanilla extract, I think that would add just a little more dimension, if you try that, let me know how it works, please.

Enjoy!