#1 Apple Spice Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Frosting

After avidly following my fair share of food blogs, I thought I would create one of my own. Any time I can avoid studying and whip up something in the kitchen I seize the moment. I found the recipe for these delicious apple spice cupcakes on Sally's Baking Addiction along with the salted caramel frosting. Normally I gravitate towards the chocolate upon chocolate option, but testing new recipes is always fun, and the sound of apple and caramel was very tempting. 

The batter is so simple, but the addition of cinnamon, nutmeg and diced apple creates a brilliant combo, and the end product was so light. I may be late to the game, but for one of the first times I used an ice cream/cookie scoop when placing the batter into the patty pans and WOW it makes the job ten times easier, and all my cupcakes were the same size! I do regret not taking a photo of what the cake looks like on the inside (blog fail #1).

The frosting was a new venture for me away from simple butter creams and ganache and it had me making a caramel on the stove which proved easier than I thought. I'm still looking into larger piping tips for that classic cupcake frosting swirl (Wilton 1M has my eye at the moment), so my Wilton #32 had to do. I tried piping the icing while still warm- that produced cupcake fails 1-3, but after about 10 minutes in the freezer swirls held perfectly. 

Nearly everyone who ate these ones commented that the cake itself didn't even need icing, and a little icing went a long way. As usual, Sally's recipe didn't fail to deliver and I will be surely making these ones again!