Apple Cupcakes Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Deliciously moist cupcakes filled with apple and topped with a maple cream cheese frosting! These delicious maple apple cupcakes will be your favorite fall treat! Step-by-step photos teach you how to bake this cupcake recipe!

As of late, I have been a little obsessed with maple and pumpkin. Just a tad. But sometimes I force myself to branch out. Like today with these Apple Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting, if I wasn't going to have the pumpkin I was GOING to have maple. Come on people!

BTW I totally just downed a LARGE oreo cookie shake from Jack in the Box.. OOPS! Seriously though best oreo cookie shake ever, and I have had oreo cookie shakes from everywhere, nothing beats jack in the box.

You see I was going to order the regular size but then I thought I haven't had one in a while, I'm not going to eat any whipped cream and I won't finish the large, so naturally, I ordered the large. And sad to say I ate all of it, like slurped every last drop, made myself sick all of it.

Sorry back to these cupcakes. Moist, chock full of apples, that by the way are perfect, not mushy or too crunchy, just perfect, oh and its topped with maple cream cheese frosting, mmmm. Perfect for fall, perfect for my oreo shake slurping dessert-obsessed belly.

Let's get to the recipe.

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• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Recipe Card
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Ingredients

The ingredient list looks long, thanks to all of the spices, but really its quite quick to make this cupcake recipe! You'll need:

• All-Purpose Flour/ Plain Flour
• Chemical leavening agents. This recipe uses a combination of both baking soda and baking powder. Baking powder has already been activated while baking soda needs an acid to activate it. The brown sugar and sour cream act as the acid but it's not enough so that's why we use baking powder too. Using just baking powder would create a metallic taste so that's why we don't use just that!
• Spices. I like the flavors of ground nutmeg, ground cloves, and ground cinnamon. Feel free to add some cardamom or ginger, I would do ¼-1/2 teaspoon.
• Large Eggs. Your eggs must be at room temperature so they can evenly combine with the rest of the ingredients.
• Pure Vanilla Extract. Please, I beg of you don't use the imitation stuff!
• Sugars. For this cupcake recipe, I wanted to use a mixture of both granulated sugar and brown sugar. The brown sugar is made with molasses creating a warmer sugary flavor, which goes perfect with apple in my humble opinion!
• Unsweetened Applesauce. You could use butter in this recipe or oil, but applesauce goes well with apple cupcakes, and it's a bit healthier, win-win!
• Sour Cream. You could also use Greek yogurt, just make sure its plain and unsweetened.
• Large Apple. For cooking I tend to use Granny Smith or Honey Crisp. But any "cooking" apple works! Cooking Apples: Granny Smith, Honey Crisp, Fuji, Gala, Braeburn, Cortland

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F/180C and line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.  

In a large bowl mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon.

In another large bowl combine eggs, vanilla, brown sugar, granulated sugar, applesauce, and sour cream.

Mix until fully combined.

Add the wet ingredients and shredded apple into the dry ingredients and use a spatula to gently fold the batter until just combined.

Over mixing the batter may create a tougher cake texture.

I like to use a large cookie scoop to portion the cupcake batter into the liners. Bake for 17-20 minutes or until set and no wet batter comes out on a toothpick. Let cool completely before frosting.

Now you'll want to prepare the maple cream cheese frosting! I have a post dedicated on how to make maple cream cheese frosting.

Frost with your favorite piping tip or use a large plastic bag with the corner cut off to make nice swirls.

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★★★★★ Please let me know if you make this recipe by leaving a star rating and comment below!

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