Spiced Apple Cupcakes With Thick Cream Cheese Frosting

If you are looking for a simple fall baking recipe, try this recipe for apple cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. The cream cheese frosting is not too sweet and very thick and pipeable. The cupcakes are moist and flavoured with apple butter and fall spices.

Apple butter is my secret ingredient for adding a strong, highly concentrated apple flavour to baked goods without adding any water to a recipe. It's a much more efficient way of adding apples without diluting flavour or messing with cake batter ratios, thus avoiding gummy textures that can come from adding fresh chopped fruit.

I've baked with apple butter to flavour apple cakes— like in this apple butter cake recipe; in scones—slathered inside to make the most delicious apple pie scones; and I've also used it in pie filling in this gorgeous apple butter pie, which makes a great alternative to Thanksgiving pumpkin tarts and maple apple pie.

These mini spiced apple cupcakes are flavoured with apple butter and cinnamon for a truly fall flavour, and topped with a cream cheese frosting that tastes like cheesecake. Yes, I really did pipe dollops of frosting that are practically the size of the cupcakes themselves. You will understand why when you make this frosting.

Jump to:

• Ingredients and Substitutions
• How To Make Apple Spice Cupcakes
• Tips For Thick Cream Cheese Frosting That Is Stable And Pipeable
• Frosting Alternatives
• Apple Cupcake Baking FAQs
• Other Apple Recipes
• 📖 Recipe

Ingredients and Substitutions

These moist apple cinnamon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting are made from simple ingredients that you likely have on hand. Still, there are a few things to note:

• butter—this recipe was developed with unsalted butter. If you prefer to use salted butter, you may have to adjust the amount of salt added to ensure the apple cakes aren't too salty.
• flour—I bake with bleached all-purpose flour, but unbleached should work too and give similar results.
• salt—I bake with Diamond Crystal fine Kosher salt. If using regular table salt, add half the amount to avoid the cupcakes being too salty.
• brown sugar—you can use light or dark brown sugar, or even regular white sugar (though the cakes won't be as flavourful as with brown sugar).
• apple butter—this is not to be confused with apple sauce! Apple sauce has much more water and may make the cupcakes too wet or gummy, and hard to bake through properly. Use apple butter! You could also replace the apple butter with pear butter or pumpkin butter.
• cream cheese—use full-fat cream cheese sold in blocks, not whipped or spreadable cream cheese. The texture of the frosting won't be the same with cream cheese spreads.

Please see the recipe card for a full list of ingredients and exact quantities.

How To Make Apple Spice Cupcakes

To make these mini apple cupcakes quickly and easily, we use the two-bowl mixing method, like many muffins and quick breads. Here's how to make these spiced apple cupcakes:

Step 1—Start by browning the butter in a small saucepan (image 1) so that it can cool before you make the spiced apple cupcake batter. Please read about how to make brown butter if you've never made it.

Step 1—Once the brown butter has cooled, you can whisk together the dry ingredients (image 2) separately from the wet ingredients (image 3) before combining them to make a smooth batter.

Step 3—I baked the cupcakes in mini muffin pans lined with mini cupcake liners (image 4), but you could also make full size cupcakes.

Step 4—After the cupcakes have cooled, top them with thick cream cheese frosting and garnish with graham cracker crumbs (image 5).

Tip: Remember to make the best cream cheese frosting, you need to first mix the butter and icing sugar before adding the cream cheese. Read all about thick cream cheese frosting with less sugar if you've never made it this way before!

Tips For Thick Cream Cheese Frosting That Is Stable And Pipeable

Without resorting to adding an excess amount of icing sugar, to make a thicker cream cheese frosting that can be used to frost a cake or decorate cupcakes, the solution is simple: change the order you mix your ingredients in:

Step 1: Cream the butter with the icing sugar first, thereby coating all the little sugar molecules with fat (I have no proof that this really happens, but my brain thinks it works like this, so bear with me!)

Step 2: Once the butter and icing sugar are well mixed, THEN you add in the COLD cream cheese. The sugar is coated with fat, therefore making it more difficult to draw out the moisture from the cold cream cheese. The cream cheese remains intact, and no water leeches out.

By following this mixing order, you can make a frosting with significantly less sugar. In fact, you end up with a frosting that tastes a lot like cheesecake, not overly sweet! At this point, you should be really excited for the recipe.

Once you have mastered this thick, pipeable cream cheese frosting recipe, you will see that it is so thick that you can use this cream cheese frosting to make layer cakes, like this berry chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and this cardamom cranberry layer cake with cream cheese frosting, so you know it's good because this cream cheese frosting works great in layer cakes too without the risk of sliding layers and weeping frosting!

Frosting Alternatives

Another option for a thick cream cheese frosting is this white chocolate cream cheese frosting that is sweetened with melted white chocolate instead of icing sugar!

Apple Cupcake Baking FAQs

Other Apple Recipes

Take advantage of fall when apples are at their peak (and more affordable too!). Try these other apple dessert recipes:

If you tried this recipe for the best apple cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (or any other recipe on my website), please leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you!

📖 Recipe