Caramel-Draped Spiced Apples

I looooove caramel. Spoonfuls of caramel, all by themselves. I love it so much that caramel apples are usually a little disappointing - too much apple, too little caramel. And so darn hard to eat when you are eager to get that good stuff into your belly!

But I just discovered a way to provide more caramel with the apple, and make it easier to eat...and not unimportantly, to make this a dessert that you can plate for guests (at times that an apple on a stick is a little too informal).

Recent blog posts had me thinking about poaching fruit, since I had a great deal of mulled red wine sitting around, and the pears in this post looked especially appealing under their drapings of chocolate sauce. I also had some extra whipping cream in the fridge, but no chocolate in the kitchen, so when I stumbled upon this post for decadent-looking caramel-coated doughnuts, the caramel sauce recipe caught my eye right away. Apples in the fridge sealed the deal: I would poach the apples in the mulled wine, and coat them with thick caramel sauce.

I highly recommend mulling your own wine, since it is easy to just throw the ingredients into a pot and have the beverage on hand to enjoy - so full of comforting fall flavors! Once you've got a batch done, you can poach your fruit in it any time; if you don't have time to get some ready, follow the instructions on eHow.com for poaching fruit in wine that you add sugar and spices to just prior to poaching. I promise to post an orange-scented mulled wine recipe as soon as I have some photos to include, but meanwhile, you can still poach some fruit with the linked instructions - or buy the mulling mix at Trader Joe's for a quick solution.

Poaching the fruit:

~ 1 bottle mulled wine (red or white; you can use as little as half a bottle of wine and add water to make the liquid cover the fruit)

4 peeled apples (I used organic Gala, but any except for very soft apples will do)

Bring the wine (or wine and water combination) to a boil in a saucepan. Add the peeled fruit to the pan so that the liquid covers the fruit (add water until it's covered, if necessary), then place a small lid or a piece of parchment paper on the surface of the liquid to keep the fruit submerged. Simmer gently until fruit is soft enough to be easily pierced by a paring knife, but not mushy yet. Remove from pan with a slotted spoon. Cut out the cores prior to serving if desired.

Salted caramel sauce:

1 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons water
1 stick (115gr) salted butter at room temperature, cut into small pieces
1 cup heavy whipping cream

In a heavy saucepan set over low heat, combine the sugar and water. Cook just until the sugar is dissolved. Add the butter. Let it come to a boil and cook until it reaches a golden caramel color. Remove from the heat and add the cream ( it will splatter and get crazy). Whisk to combine and put back on the stove. Let it come to a boil again over low heat and cook 15-25 minutes until you reach a creamy consistency.
Let cool. Spoon liberally over poached fruit when ready to serve.

Fall Cupcakes

Since I'm taking forever to write this post, I decided to just post the pictures without the full recipes, but you've got the idea from my previous cupcake posts: make a white cake mix and add flavors, decorate with buttercream or cream cheese frosting tinted with complementary flavors and colors!

Here we go:


These are the vanilla bean brandy and mint chip cupcakes. As you might guess, the former are flavored with the seeds of a vanilla bean and a small touch of brandy, and the latter were given a light touch of mint extract and sprinkled with dark chocolate chunks (and green food coloring reminiscent of the ice cream!).


On the left are the caramelized apple cupcakes, which are based on a Tarte Tatin idea; I caramelized an apple, puréed it, and mixed some in with the batter. Then I made some brown sugar caramel and coated the bottom of each cupcake liner with the caramel and poured the batter in on it. They stuck fantastically to the pan, so greasing it would have been good, but in the end I was able to peel the paper off each cupcake and turned them over into new liners, as pictured here. Since a Tarte Tatin is an upside-down cake, I thought it would be appropriate...and I added more caramel on top for good measure. On the right are pumpkin spice cupcakes, to which I added spices based on my family pumpkin pie recipe, plus some pumpkin purée. Both of these cupcakes were moister than the others because of the fruit purées, and the others were lighter.


Mint chocolate chip, topped with chocolate buttercream that had just a hint of mint extract (the stuff is strong, so be careful!) and dark chocolate chunks.


Pumpkin spice, swirled on top with cream cheese frosting that had a bit of the pumkin pie spice in it (see the flecks?), and an abstract pumpkin piped on with a few green sprinkles to insinuate a stem. The pumpkin decoration is a bit too abstract, since people still had to ask what the flavor was, but I still think it's cute.


I kept the vanilla bean decoration simple, adding more vanilla bean seeds to the buttercream, but again included brandy to keep a thematic kick to the cupcake.

And, finally, the caramelized apple took a squiggly dollop of cream cheese frosting on top, with more brown sugar caramel mixed in.

I've just learned that there is a book out there called The Cake Mix Doctor which basically does what I've been doing with these cupcakes - it tells you how to start with a cake mix and flavor it up in all sorts of ways. This reinforces for me the fact that cake mixes are fairly fool proof; you can do a lot to them and they'll still turn out great!

I've added fruit purées of varying densities, extracts, cocoa powder, coffee, caramel, fruit juice, spices, sprinkles, dried fruit, Oreos, coconut, nuts, honey, almond paste, and candy (i.e., all manner of liquids, fats, and sugars!) and every one has been a success. As my mom says, cake mixes are full of stabilizers that home cooks don't have access to for cakes from scratch, which means that cakes from scratch can be pretty difficult to get right (something I personally have proven with a number of dense, heavy cakes). It takes mastering a number of correct techniques in order to get a good scratch cake.

So, don't feel bad if you rely on cake mixes! Why not use a fool-proof method of achieving a moist and well-textured cake? Just get creative by doctoring the batter up a bit to satisfy your inner food artist. And make sure to use homemade frosting, since that part is super easy and makes an immeasurable difference in the final product.