In September of 2009, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven't read about it yet, you can do so here. ***
The following are terrific to make if you want to eat cupcakes for breakfast without feeling (too) guilty. They are more like a muffin and actually incorporate some fruit, so they aren't as bad for you as the really yummy ones. ;)
First, I mixed together the dry ingredients, which included nutmeg, one of my all-time-favorite spices. Mmm. It just smells like autumn, doesn't it?
I measured out the applesauce called for in the recipe.
I zested a lemon.
And we mixed all the yummy goodness together with some (what else?) butter and sugar.
While my mixer was doing the hard part, I combined all the topping ingredients: sugar, flour, a diced apple, and chopped walnuts.
I also measured out the walnuts and cranberries for the batter.
The batter resembled a nutmeg-y cookie dough. Mmm!
The cranberries and walnuts were thrown into the mix before they knew what hit them!
A little bit of batter was blopped out into 24 muffin papers (the recipe says "Makes 18", to which I reply: HA!)
A little bit of butter was melted down...
and the topping ingredients were added...
to make this lovely mixture:
I put a small dab of topping on each blop of batter and the cuppies prepared themselves for the heat.
Mmm. If raw eggs weren't so risky, I'd probably just eat them like this:
But, they are EVEN BETTER if you can wait for them to bake. Mmm. I might have to make these again soon!
