Spiced Apple CupCrisps

To kick off the new school year, I gave the apple a starring role in my latest baking endeavor.  While the apple does make a nice teacher gift, I thought my teacher-in-training friends would prefer their back-to-school apples in a cupcake.  So, I set out to turn a can of apple pie filling and a box of spice cake into an apple crisp-inspired cupcake.  I was a little hesitant about how the two would combine and I was a lot unhappy when the cupcakes first came out of the oven.  The texture of the cake was weird and I was on the verge of scrapping the whole project.  But, with some encouragement and eye-rolling from my sister, who was managing the project over iChat, I stuck to it.  I really liked how the maple cream cheese frosting turned out and figured, with my fingers crossed, that it would go a long way in masking a few cake quirks.  Luckily, after a night in the fridge there was no masking necessary; the cake set-up quite nicely, the crisp topping actually crisped and was a nice contrast to the soft cake and baked apple pieces, and the frosting was the perfect touch of sweet to finish it all off.  With just a bit of beauty sleep, these Spiced Apple CupCrisps earn themselves a passing grade, and maybe they can even keep the doctor away for a day or two!

Spiced Apple Cake Ingredients
1 box          Spice Cake mix (plus oil, water, and eggs according to instructions)
1 can          Comstock Apple Pie Filling

Crisp Topping Ingredients
1/2 cup        flour
1/2 cup        brown sugar
1/4 cup        butter (if butter is unsalted add 1/2 tsp salt...or maybe just 1/4 tsp!)
1 tsp            cinnamon

Frosting Ingredients
1 can          Cream Cheese frosting
To Taste     maple syrup
Pinch          cinnamon

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2.  Line cupcake trays with paper cupcake liners.
3.  Prepare cake batter according to box instructions.
4.  Cut canned apples into bite size pieces (I just chopped around in the can with a butter knife).
5.  Stir can of apples and filling into cake batter by hand.
6.  In a separate bowl combine all Crisp Topping ingredients with a pastry cutter until well combined and crumbly.

7.  Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full, making sure there are some apple chunks in each cupcake.

8.  Cover batter with small handful of crisp topping.

9.  Bake for 20 minutes.
10.  Let cupcakes cool.
11.  Meanwhile, empty can of Cream Cheese frosting into mixing bowl.
12.  Mix maple syrup and a pinch of cinnamon into cream cheese frosting until desired taste (I love maple so I added quite a bit, but be sure to go slow so it doesn't get too sweet...if there's such a thing!)
13.  Now for the fun part, frost cupcakes!

14.  Let set in fridge, then enjoy this cupcake-take on apple crisp!

Happy back to school baking :)