The Everything Fall Cupcake - Pumpkin, Apple, Maple, Spiced Rum, Brown Sugar, Cinnamon, and Cranberry

Fall brings reds, oranges, yellows, and purples; there's no one color to represent Autumn.  Likewise, this year I thought that a single (or even two or three) Fall flavor(s) in a cupcake would not do.  I decided to combine some past single-flavor Fall cupcake favorites into one Everything Fall Cupcake recipe.  What you see above are (take a deep breath) pumpkin, spiced rum, and maple cupcakes topped with cinnamon cream cheese frosting and dried cranberries - with brown sugar frosting-topped apple cobbler cupcakes baked inside. 

I created the Everything Fall Cupcake for a very special event that you are all attending whether you knew it or not...

You've arrived at the first stop on CakeSpy's virtual book tour for her first book, CakeSpy Presents Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life. 

While I admire many food blogs for their tempting recipes, personable and descriptive writing, and mouthwatering food photography, I am most impressed with blogs that show creativity.  Jessie Oleson (CakeSpy) has one of the most creative blogs out there.  She combines her so-cute-you-want-to-pinch-them cartoons - featuring the now famous (in the cupcake world) cupcake character, Cuppie - with over-the-top recipes that always make me wonder why no one thought of them before.

Although I haven't met Jessie, we've emailed and tweeted over the years and she was a judge in this year's Ice Cream Cupcake Contest!  I was so stoked to not only get a review copy of her book, but also to be the first stop on the virtual book tour!

 

When perusing Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life to decide what to bake for you for on the tour stop (what would a baking book tour be without sweet treats?), my choice was clear.  In her book, Jessie creates the cupcake in a cupcake - genius!!  The Everything Fall Cupcake is my own take on her creation (which, by the way, is her take on the work of her friend Megan Seling from Bake It In a Cake).  If her cupcakes in cupcakes idea hadn't existed, though, I would still have had many over-the-top outrageous recipes to choose from.  In Jessie's book, there are recipes for grilled cheesecake (two slices of pound cake with cheesecake in the middle), blondie-topped brownies (um, yum!), and the Pookie, a cookie-coated pie (that can't be bad!).   Grab a copy of the book now (or add it now to your holiday wish list) for tons of inspired recipe ideas or just to see more of Cuppie and friends.

To catch the rest of CakeSpy's virtual tour, visit these blogs over the next two weeks:

October 11: Bake It in a Cake!

October 12: Culinary Concoctions by Peabody

October 13: Dessert First

October 14: Cookie Madness

October 15: Bake and Destroy

October 16: Piece of Cake

October 17: Not Martha

October 19: Big Girls, Small Kitchen

October 20: Blondie and Brownie

To learn how to win a signed copy of  Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life, be sure to stop by the Cupcake Project Facebook page in the next couple of days!

More About Cupcakes In Cupcakes

When you bake a cupcake inside of a cupcake, you end up with a little cupcake nipple poking out of the top of the original cupcake.  This is normal, and as you can see in the photo at the top of this post, once you frost the cupcakes, no one will ever know it was there.

Cupcakes inside of cupcakes open up a whole new realm of cupcake possibilities.  Take any two cupcake and frosting flavors you love and you might love them even more in the same cupcake!  Not only do you achieve different but complementary flavors in one bite, but you also end up with varied textures, a super moist center from the twice-baked cupcake, a typical cupcake texture from the normal-sized cupcake, and a top that has flaky crunchy bits from the mini-cupcake's frosting spreading and caramelizing.

Warning:  If you are one of those people who likes to keep all of their food groups separate on the plate (no peas touching the mashed potatoes), cupcakes in cupcakes are not for you.

How to Make The Everything Fall Cupcake

As I mentioned above, every component of these cupcakes has been featured on Cupcake Project before.  So, rather than a recipe for the Everything Fall Cupcake, I've shared assembly instructions with you:

1. Bake mini apple cobbler cupcakes. To make the minis, chop the apple pieces a bit smaller than in the big cupcakes and cut the baking time down to fifteen minutes.  You'll end up with way more than you need if you follow the recipe exactly.  If you don't want a ton of extras (why wouldn't you want extras, though?), cut the recipe in half. 
2. Frost the mini cupcakes with brown sugar frosting.
3. Freeze the frosted cupcakes.
4. Prepare the batter for pumpkin maple rum cupcakes.
5. Fill normal-sized cupcake liners half full with the batter.
6. Remove the liners from the frozen frosted apple cobbler cupcakes.
7. Place a frozen cupcake into the center of each prepared pumpkin cupcake.  This should push the pumpkin batter two-thirds of the way up the liner.
8. Bake at 350 F for 20 minutes or until the cupcakes bounce back when lightly touched.
9. Frost with cinnamon cream cheese frosting.
10. Top with dried cranberries.

One More Note of Thanks

Thanks to everyone who chimed in on Facebook with their favorite Fall flavors.  You were a great help to me in putting this cupcake together.