Perfect for brunch or mid-afternoon snack, these apple streusel cupcakes is a newest addition to my streusel arsenal.
Arsenal? I found a recipe at Joy of Baking almost a year ago, I have used it to make a cake with strawberries, cupcakes with blueberries, doubled the recipe to make a bigger cake or more cupcakes and they all turned out great! The secret, I think, is that the basic cake recipe was really made for products that include fresh fruits — the natural fruit juices mix into the batter making the baked cake or cupcakes moist and soft. Armed with that theory, I set about making yet another batch of cupcakes — this time using fresh apple. The result, as I anticipated, was great.
If you’re using non-stick muffin/cupcake pans, there is no need to grease nor line them with paper cups. I use a non-stick muffin pan but because I planned on packing some of the cupcakes into the girls’ lunchboxes, I still used paper cups. You know, so they’d be easier to handle. Unfortunately, the apple streusel cupcakes didn’t last the night. We finished them even before they had a chance to cool.
- 1/3 cup all purpose flour
- 1/3 cup white sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon powdered cinnamon
- 1/4 cup cold unsalted butter cut into very small cubes
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter softened to room temperature
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/3 cup low-fat milk
- 1 eating apple peeled and cut into half-inch cubes
-
Preheat the oven to 350F.
-
Beat the butter with a wire whisk. Add the sugar and continue beating until the mixture is light in texture. Add the egg and beat until well incorporated (no egg steaks remain visible). Add the flour and milk, alternately and in batches, to the butter-sugar mixture, starting and ending with the flour.
-
Spoon the batter into the muffin/cupcake pans until they are two-thirds to three-fourths full. Divide the apple cubes so that the cupcakes get equal amounts of apple topping. Scatter the apple cubes on top of the batter. Don’t worry, they won’t sink.
-
Make the streusel topping by mixing the ingredients together until the texture resembles coarse crumbs. I like to do this by hand — the hand can tell better of the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle the cupcakes with the streusel topping.
-
Bake in a 350F oven for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted at the center comes out clean.
-
