Homemade Cinnamon Apple Cupcakes with Caramel Buttercream Icing

My mom is a great cook!  I grew up watching her prepare most of our meals.  She can cook for a crowd and she can cook for a few.  She makes all of our birthday cakes from scratch.  She can cook from a recipe and she can cook without a recipe.  She's amazing.

The past 10 years that I've been out of the house,  I've cooked many meals.  None as good as mom's meals, but I'm getting there.

I also LOVE to bake.

Yesterday, I needed to fix a dessert for dinner at our neighbor's house.  Hank was sleeping and I really didn't want to go to the store when he woke up.  So, I had to bake with what I had on hand.

I googled recipes using things in my kitchen and found several recipes for frosted apple cakes.  However, I couldn't find one recipe that I had all the ingredients on hand.  So, I gave up and made up my own recipe.  What a pleasant surprise - they tasted great!

I made 12 regular cupcakes and 8 mini cupcakes (the mini ones were for taste testing).

Here is my new recipe:

Cinnamon Apple Cupcakes
Ingredients:
1/2 cup of butter (1 stick), softened
2/3 cups sugar
2 cups self rising flour
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 cup of milk (I used 1%)
4 apples, pealed, cored, and chopped finely (Pampered Chef makes the best apple peeler, corer, slicer, ever!)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Line muffin tins or grease them

Using an electric mixer, mix butter and sugar together.
Once blended, add all other ingredients except apples.
Mix for 2 minutes.
Stir/fold in apple pieces.

Pour into pan

Cook for 20 minutes or until you can insert a toothpick in the center of the cake and pull out clean.

Cool on wire racks.

Caramel Buttercream Icing
Ingredients:
1/3 cup shortening
1/3 cup butter
2/3 cup caramel ice cream topping
2 cups (1 box) powdered confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons milk

Directions:
Blend shortening and butter together.
Add caramel and vanilla.
Gradually add in the confectioners sugar.
Blend in the brown sugar and milk.

Once the cakes are completely cool, frost them.

You can garnish by drizzling caramel sauce on top and with chopped pecans or walnuts - or if you have a kid with allergies you can garnish one for yourself and leave the rest plain :)
While searching for recipes, I also saw apple cupcakes garnished with a caramel apple sucker stuck in the center.

Enjoy!