Let me introduce you to maple cream cheese icing!!! All the greatness of cream cheese icing, with an added dose of maple syrup. Yep, it’s as good as it sounds…it’s lick straight from the spoon amazing! Wish I could take all the credit, but the frosting recipe is from Ottolenghi’s apple cake that I adapted into cupcakes. The apple-olive oil cake was one of my regular orders from the Ottolenghi cafe in the great old days when I lived a few blocks down the road from it. It was a dense, moist, apple packed cake that pairs perfectly with cozy weather. So now apple season has come again I wanted to re-create this cake into a cupcake form where the icing to cake ratio is more to my liking.
Making this icing right is a very important of the cupcakes. I’ve made this icing a few times over the years…with a few fails along the way. I finally realised that you have to, absolutely have to, use soft light brown sugar for this one. Don’t use regular brown sugar, like I’ve made the mistake of doing. The sugar doesn’t quite dissolve into the icing and you end up with a still delicious but slightly grainy icing.
I tried adapting the apple cake into cupcakes but I didn’t like the texture so much as a cupcake so did some more recipe testing and created a different cupcake recipe that I loaded up with apples. I recommend not going light on the frosting and adding an extra drizzle of maple syrup for good measure.
Maple Apple Cupcakes
Ingredients
130g / 1 cup AP flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
150g / 3/4 cup brown sugar
50g / 1/4 cup granulated sugar
50g / 1/2 cup unflavoured oil
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
200g grated apple ~ about 2 large apples
Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
100g / 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
100g / 1/2 cup light brown sugar
220g / 1 3/4 cups soft cream cheese
85g / 1/4 cup maple syrup
Instructions
Heat the oven to 350F. Line a cupcake tin with liners.
In a large bowl whisk all the dry ingredients together. Grate the apple. In another bowl whisk all the wet ingredients together and add the apple. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and fold until just combined.
Fill the cupcake liners with an ice-cream scoop of batter to about 3/4 way full.
Bake for 10mins, then rotate the pans. Bake for about another 10mins until a toothpick in the center comes out clean.
Cool cupcakes in the tin for 10mins, then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
Frosting
Beat softened butter and light brown sugar together with an electric mixer on medium high till light and fluffy. Add the cream cheese and beat on low until fully mixed in. Add the maple syrup, turn up to medium high and beat for 3-5mins until light and fluffy.
These sound absolutely amazing. I’m going to try and make these tomorrow with my kiddos! I’m excited to see the difference using soft brown sugar will make! Thanks for the tip
Awesome! Let me know how they turn out 🙂