Apple Muffins

As I was sitting on the couch this evening watching Ghost Adventures, I was thinking of my blog and how I really wanted it to be a baking blog and I had this urge to just bake something.  In my mind I was going through the options I had to bake "The bananas aren't ripe enough for bread...I don't have a full bag of chocolate chips, damn my chocolate cravings!" I remembered then that I bought a bag of apples at the grocery store and decided to use those for something. Apples are the best during fall, crisp and juicy, and I love to bake with them. I found the original apple muffin recipe from The-Girl-Who-Ate-Everything.  As I speak (a.k.a write this) the house is starting to smell like apple-brown sugar-cinnamon goodness.

EDIT:  I brought some muffins to a couple of my co-workers and they both LOVED them.  One asked for the recipe, and the other said she doesn't even like apples that much but thought the muffins were amazing.

Ingredients you'll need:
2 cups granulated sugar2 eggs
1 cup oil (I used about 1 1/4 cup oil...I'll tell you why further down)
1/2 tbsp vanilla extract (the original recipe called for 1 tbsp but I thought that seemed like a bit much)
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 cups of diced apples, peeled and cored (I used 5 small apples and it was just a little over 3 cups)
brown sugar for topping, optional

1. Peel, core, and chop the apples.  This is the most tedious part of this whole process, in my opinion.

2. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and line muffin pans with cupcake liners

3. Combine sugar, eggs, 1 cup oil, and vanilla in a bowl.

4. Add flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon to wet ingredients and stir until  just combined. The batter is supposed to be really thick and DO NOT OVER-STIR! I REPEAT, DO NOT OVER-STIR! I think I over-stirred using my mixer and totally effed something up.  The "batter" was so dry it was more like wet sand (you could have totally made batter castles with it) than batter.  I added more oil, about 1/4 cup more and a little bit of water until the "batter" became more like thick batter. Crisis averted though!

5. Add apples to batter and stir to combine.

Love those apple chunks! 

6. Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 full and sprinkle with brown sugar, if desired. After baking, the brown sugar gives a nice crunch to the muffins.

7. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Considering I messed up the batter I think the muffins turned out pretty darn good! I had to tell myself to keep in mind these are apple muffins, not apple-cinnamon muffins.  I would have preferred more of a cinnamon taste myself so if  I make these again I will definitely be adding more cinnamon. Until next time, Fire Away!

Before the muffins went in the oven

after the muffins came out of the oven