So my friend moved away (which I still haven’t forgiven him for), and before he left he was coming over to say bye and I made him stay by promising cupcakes. These cupcakes, you see, were made of manipulation (and love, but he couldn’t see past the manipulation piece).

He told me I baked with intentions too often and I decided to, well, tell the internet all about it. Which is kind of a weird reaction now that I think about it, but I figured there is someone out there who really wants to hear about how to use baking as a weapon (but, like, the good kind of weapon, not the kind that kills people. We don’t do that here. You’ll have to go down the street for that sort of thing).

So these are, as my cookbook says, “Warm Spiced Apple Pie Cupcakes.” They’re more like muffins, but that may be something I did to make them more dense. Either way, these are fantastic. I didn’t get any photos of the ones I made, but I’ll take a picture of the pretty ones in the book because for once in my life what I baked looked like what was pictured. So I don’t feel bad doing that.

Anyway. Here’s the recipe:

Spiced Apple Pie Cupcakes/Muffins

Ingredients

3 1/2 Tbsp butter, softened

1/3 cup raw brown sugar

1 egg lightly beaten

1 heaping cup all-purpose flour (which looks exactly how it sounds.)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 large baking apple, peeled, cored, and finely chopped (I used a Braeburn apple)

1 Tbsp orange juice

(For the topping)

5 Tbsp all purpose flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

2 Tbsp butter

1/4 cup superfine sugar
1. Preheat oven to 350. Like a 12 hole muffin pan with cupcake liners.

2. To make the topping, place the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, butter, and superfine sugar in a large bowl and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs (this was my favorite part). Set this aside.

3. To make the cupcakes, beat together butter and brown sugar in a large bowl until it’s fluffy. Then gradually beat in the egg. Sift in flour, baking powder, and spices and fold into the mixture. Then fold in chopped apple and orange juice.

4. Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners. Add the topping to cover the top of each cupcake and press down gently. I suggest being very generous with the topping, because it’s delicious.

5. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

6. Enjoy.

These are sort of like tiny apple pie muffins. As someone who likes apple pie these are fantastic. Even if you don’t really like apple pie (which I can see as I didn’t really like pie for a long while), these are still pretty fantastic.

And fun fact: you can use them to manipulate your friends to stay longer than they had planned. If you’ve got leftover topping, stay tuned and I’ll tell you how to use it for Snickerdoodle cookies (which is what I did, making my friend stay even longer as I baked a few dozen cookies, but that’s a story for next time).