It’s well and truly autumn now. Great news for me as it’s by far my favourite season.  I adore the colour of the leaves at this time or year, and in a much more shallow way, I love my autumn wardrobe.  You get to wear scarves and hats, yet not freeze your butt off.  It’s cool enough for cosy winter coats and the nights are not too dark.

It’s also an opportunity to change up the ingredients in my baking.  Spices play a heavy roll.  Using dark brown sugars and treacle always seems like the right move.  Pumpkins a plenty!  Apples and pears also feature heavily.  These cupcakes incorporate most of the above with a hint of spice and chunks of caramelised apple throughout.

These spiced apple cupcakes encapsulate the season in a bite.  They are simple to make and don’t have the fuss or over-the-top sweetness of buttercream icing. They are light and moist with a cinnamon crunch on top thanks to the generous sprinkling of sugar atop the sliced apples.  This recipe would work equally well with pears and is a great way to use up any that you find that just won’t ripen up in your fruit bowl.  (more…)

If you’re from the Inverness area you may have noticed that I am feautred in the Highland News, a local newspaper, this month.  As of this weeks edition I am their new monthly baking columnist!  I’m really excited to see my recipe out there in print and hopefully everyone who can has picked up a copy to check it out, and if you have then thank you!

Here in Inverness we have been treated to some proper summer weather lately so for my first recipe I chose two scrumptious summer fruits, both perfectly ripe at this time of year, and brought them together in the cupcake version of a retro dessert….peach melba!

I absolutely love baked peaches, nectarines and apricots.  They flavour of the fruit becomes so intense and the texture is so soft, it’s just wonderful!  The chunks of raspberry cut through the sweetness nicely to give the perfectly balanced cupcake. (more…)