Apple Spice & Cauliflower Cupcakes

Soooooooo…….Back track about 18 months ago, I was a busy new mom who was spending much time making homemade baby food for her infant.  I found out right away that mixing a vegetable with a fruit usually meant that the food situation was a win- win for both of us.  I mixed avocados with bananas, broccoli with apples, and green beans with pears.  But My son’s favorite combination by far was apple cinnamon with cauliflower.

And I must say, whenever I steamed apples and cauliflower together in my baby Brezza and added some cinnamon, the kitchen always smelled so good!

Last week my husband was in China for work, and my son and I were invited to a friend’s house for supper.  My friend has a boy who just turned 1, so I thought I would bring a dessert that would be baby and adult friendly.

I had just picked up some beautiful apples from the store, and I happened to have some cauliflower around, so a tweaked the recipe and made Apple spice cupcakes with cauliflower puree.

I simply steamed about 1 1/2 cups of chopped cauliflower in the microwave and pureed it in my food processor.  I added this to my cake batter, similarly to how may people would add applesauce to a recipe.  The key  to any baking recipe, is to get a certain amount of moisture in the batter.  It doesn’t necessarily matter what that moisture is.

One of the nice things about cauliflower, is that it tastes pretty neutral, so it was easy to disguise this healthy vegetable in my apple spice cupcakes.

Apple Spice and Cauliflower Cupcakes 

Ingredients 

1 1/3 cups of vegetable oil

3 cups of flour

1 tablespoon of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 cup of sugar

3 large eggs

2 1/2 cups of chopped apples . YOU PICK the KIND

1 cup of cauliflower puree

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

1) MIX wet ingredients together.

2)  ADD the dry.  

3) Mix together well 

4) place batter in your cupcake tins lined. 

5) Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes, or when golden brown.  

These turned out great!  I will say, I was afraid that I might have put too much moisture in them.  I made a simple cream cheese frosting recipe and brought them over to my friends house, they were a hit!

I also left a group of them unfrosted to eat as muffins for breakfast the next morning. Remember, I only put 1 cup of sugar in all of these.  This was not too sweet to eat for breakfast.

I will be making these again sometime.  This is just another example of how I am quite the sneaky mom:)