Z as in Zebra

In September, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

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One of my favorite smells of Autumn is that of Apple Cider. Mmm. I can smell it now. That said, I was very excited to try the Thanksgiving Apple Cider Cupcakes.

You start with your dry ingredients, chopped dried apples (straight from my grandparents’ farm in Nebraska!) and warm apple cider.

The dry ingredients (including cinnamon) combined with the apple cider make THE most aromatic batter ever.

Next, I added the dried apple bits:

And the baked beauties looked a little something like this:

Look at that yummy texture!

Next, I cooked up some chopped apples with some butter and sugar to make the filling.

Once the cupcakes are cool, you hollow out the centers ever-so-slightly and fill the cavity with the baked apples.

Mmm Mmm Mmm. Who needs icing?!

In September, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

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In the “After Dinner Cupcakes” chapter, every recipe calls for some sort of alcohol. You can tell by the name that these called for rum. In fact, the first step was to soak raisins in rum for 30 minutes.

Then the rum was boiled with some butter and sugar to make a syrupy mixture.

The syrup was added to the dry ingredients along with the soaked raisins.

Ready to go in the oven!

Baked:

Mmm. Wish you could smell these! Look at that sweet, sticky cupcake dome!

Rum was also used in the icing. Then, each cupcake was topped with a raisin.

I’m ready for my close-up.

Look at that sweet, slightly crusted icing and that moist cakey goodness! Whew!

*CHOMP!* Delish!