Chocolate Apple Cupcakes

I'm really into Bramley Apples at the moment. I tend to go through stages of being obsessed by them, then being sick of them through eating too much and completely forgetting about them, then I love them again.
I normally just boil them with a tiny bit of water and some brown sugar and either eat by themselves like that or add some frozen summer fruits.
I'm also a huge fan of Chocolate Apples. So much so that at Easter I melt down any eggs I get and just chop up apples [Granny Smiths or Golden Delicious] and dip them in. Mmmmmmm.

So this morning I started boiling some apples and Charles asks me if I'm making cakes. Why not I thought? In fact, why not combine cakes and the apples?
I knew I had a bag of raisins in the fruit bowl so originally planned to make apple and raisin cupcakes but then *ting* apple and CHOCOLATE cupcakes seemed a lot more appealing.
With that Charles scuttled off to get his Giraffe chair to stand on, came back, placed it by the side of the work top, stood on and said "mix, mix, mix" and away we went.

Firstly I made my cake mix. As I usually do I made a big batch so I could make quite a few cakes rather than just 12..
To make the mixture I used:
250g butter
250g caster sugar
Mix those together in a bowl then add
250g self-raising flour
4 free range eggs
(Add one egg at a time, each time folding in some of the flour)

I decided to half the mixture into a separate bowl so I could make two different flavoured cupcakes.
To make the Chocolate Apple Cupcakes I firstly cooked some Bramley Apples. I add a small amount of water and some brown sugar and keep stirring them round the saucepan until soft.
Then transfer into a bowl to cool down.
I added some Nutella to the apples and mixed. [I don't measure added ingredients but I'd estimate that I used 1 large Bramley apple and 2 dessert spoonfuls of Nutella.

Then add this to the cake mixture. "Mix, mix, mix" then spoon into cake cases [my mixture made 12]. I also decided to add a dollop of Nutella to the top. For 2 of the cupcakes I experimented by adding a small amount of cake mix to the case, then added a tiny scoop of Nutella and then topped this up with more cake mix. They were probably the best of the cakes and this is what I would do again rather than/as well as putting the Nutella on top.

These then went into a preheated oven at 180degrees for 24 minutes.

Once cooked. I took them out of the oven, removed them from the muffin tray and left to cool.

These cakes are truly delicious. The Bramley Apple tastes amazing and I did worry that maybe it would be too sweet but its perfect as the other flavours of the cake itself tone down the sourness of the apples. Even Charles ate one!
Try it yourself!