Caramel Apple Muffins

Have you ever taken a bite of something and known that you seriously must have that particular thing again? Like within the next minute if humanly possible??

Well I had that occasion twice yesterday!!
One was a cupcake from a fancy bakery.
It was hands down the best red velvet cake I have ever had cross my lips!
The icing was a light cream cheese perfection, and the cupcake was moist and fluffy and amazing!
It was a delightful gift from a neighbor and probably cost her close to four bucks!!
Oh, I am loved!

The other was a simple homemade muffin!

Don't let that description fool you though. I mean, there was no custom labeled box or delicate hand wrapped paper, just a simple muffin in a ziploc bag! Again, delivered with love!

I knew that this was a recipe I would be having, and one I would be sharing with you as soon as possible so, without further ado...

...Caramel Apple Muffins.
Those colorful underlined letters up above mean you can go there for a printable!

I started this recipe by combining 2 eggs and 2 cups of cane sugar in my trusty Kitchen-aid mixer!
The recipe says to cream these two things, and I did alright!!
I forgot about them for a bit, which made the eggs quite fluffy...that was a good thing in my estimation.
I think it made the muffins fluffier, with a yummy crispy top in the end product!
Add to that a teaspoon of vanilla and head over to chop some apples.

My first apple I spent a respectable amount of time peeling, seeding and chopping into semi delicate pieces.

I knew the smaller I could get those guys, the more likely they would just hide, hide away within the batter of the muffin.

Then I remembered that I have a fancy apple, peeler, corer, slicer from my old Pampered Chef days and whipped that puppy out to make quick work of the second apple.

I mean, duh....if you have a fancy kitchen tool that saves time and energy then you should use it.
This second apple took me a third of the time to cut and the pieces ended up roughly the same size when I was done chopping!!

In a separate bowl I then sifted 1 1/2 cups white wheat flour and 1 1/2 cups cake flour.
See, I was thinking...the original recipe that I was working from was for a cake. Cake flour goes in cakes, so voila...in it went to my...uhhhh muffins? Hey it works for me.
I thought it would give a nice accompaniment to the white wheat flour as well, without weighing it down!

The wheat flour adds a depth of flavor that I have come to crave in my baked goods!!

Of course you could use plain old all purpose flour for this...but why would ya?
Well, I suppose if you didn't happen to have anything but that on hand...then that might be a good reasonable argument for that case.

Oh boy, there I go getting all flour crazy on you and forgot to tell you the other dry ingredients.
1 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 1/2 tsp. salt, and 1 tsp. cinnamon.
I upped the salt to 2 tsp. since I use sea salt and I also added 1/2 tsp allspice...for kicks, I am not sure that it made that much of a difference, but I liked the taste just fine!

Meanwhile, over at the toaster oven...I spread about a cup of pecans on a pan and put them in to cook for approximately 10 minutes at 350. Just to get them a little toasty!
Why I didn't simply put them in the oven which needed to be heated anyway is beyond me.

All I can say is...I am still taking pain medication and was distracted by my company and the rain and my whining dog, and the color of the muffin papers.
Next I took a chance on an idea and pulsed the cooled pecans in my mini food processor, til they looked like this.

Big enough not to be confused as another flour, but small enough to hide from picky children who think they don't like nuts in stuff. I ended up really enjoying this choice in the muffins, you make your pecan pieces however big or small that you need to!

Okay?

Okay!

Alrighty now back to our mixing bowl.
We have beaten the eggs, sugar, and vanilla and now we are going to add in the sifted dry ingredients.
After all of the dry is gently incorporated into the wet, add 3/4 cup oil.

At this point in the process you are going to run about the kitchen in despair because you will have a bowl that looks like a crumbly mess instead of a batter. It will freak you out and you will run back to the recipe to be sure there wasn't some mysterious ingredient that you did not happen to see.

Talk about distressing!!!
Have no fear my friends it will all come together.

Gather your wits about you and head back over to the bowl to fold in the apple chunks and pecans.
Don't you just enjoy my writing where I start off talking about me making the muffins, then switch to you doing it!!
I am no professional people, just here to pass on something new!

At some point in the stirring something magical happens and it becomes a thick chunky batter.
Scoop this delightful chunkiness into 20-24 lined muffin cups.

If you are tired and happen to have a brother in law about, then he will take to the job just fine!

We got 22 muffins from our efforts!

Place these in the center of your oven to bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.


As I waited for these to bake I was jotting down my recipe changes and texting with my friend who had emailed the recipe to me.

She had originally called me with the icing recipe, which I scribbled on the closest scrap of paper. The one with my watermark sketches!!
And that is my Ticonderoga pencil, a must!

Always do this scribbling of notes in the midst of preparing the recipe, and in pencil! That way you can remember and erase! Two signs of a good cook!

Alright, now on to that icing.
This is the part of the recipe that would have knocked my socks off had I been wearing any.
The original recipe calls for sugar, I used lite brown sugar, Rachel (aka the friend) had used dark brown in the sample she brought to me.
Trust me on this...use dark brown. The flavor is outta sight!!
But for our purposes today, my image shows 1 cup of lite brown sugar and 1 stick of butter.

I know light is spelled light, not lite...just so ya know.

Bring these two simple things together in a pan, add some heat and delicious things happen!
Bring it to a boil and let it bubble for around 2 minutes and don't for any reason try to take pictures on the manual setting of your camera while boiling and stirring hot caramel.
That would be quite a ludicrous thing to do.

Things get dropped and caramel gets splattered when that type of situation is set up.
So, just don't do it.
But do add 1/4 cup milk and bring the mixture back to a boil.
Remove it from the heat and let it cool a bit while you remove the muffins from the oven.

When things have cooled down a bit, add about 2 cups of powdered sugar to the warm caramel mixture. My mixer did the work for me here, and whipped that out in no time.
Try really hard at this point not to taste the icing.
Just don't do it.
If you do then you will be tempted to forget about those muffins and just eat this bowl of caramel joy.
Though I will say, the muffin is the perfect conduit for the icing.
This is an occasion when it is okay to put the warm icing on the slightly warm muffins.
Swirl it around on top, not getting too close to the edges cause it will do that melty drippy thing, which I am not opposed to, but it does make handing one to someone more difficult.
I pretty much just glopped the icing on these guys. It begins to harden fairly quickly, so don't get distracted!



I did make a pretty one just for you.

Scattering a pinch of those bitty pecans on top!

This has a chewy crunchy top, and a moist inside laden with apples that do in fact seem to melt into them.
Apparently not enough...my kids wondered what the "lumps" in there were.
These might be closer to big people treats than kiddie treats....which frankly just means more for me!!!
I promise not to go to the kitchen an only lick the icing off of the tops!
I hope you will give this homey recipe a try.
It is no bakery cupcake, but delightfully yummy it is!!!

See ya tomorrow.
Oh...btw, blogger was down for quite some time today which kept me from posting this when I wanted to.

And then it was wonky when it finally was up which allowed me to practically reload and rewrite most of the post despite my efforts not to.
If you have never used blogger then you will understand that as much as a non coffee drinker who is out of cream!