Brina Bakes: Success: Pumpkin bread pudding cupcakes with apple chai glaze

Cupcakes are a sucess!

The theme is re-invention, so I decided to take my two favourite desserts and cupcake them up. What is my favourite dessert? Pumpkin Pie, and Apple Crisp. Okok, those are two things. But I bet they would go really well together. Wouldn't they? They would.

My first attempt at pumpkin cupcakes was a failure, unfortunately, and I decided to go with something different: bread pudding. Pumpkin bread pudding.

I left spices out of the cupcake bit entirely, because I wanted the chai in the apple glaze to really shine. I'm glad I did, but I was a bit underwhelmed by the pumpkinnyness of the pudding. I would probably up the amount of pumpkin* -- or add a bit of filling to it -- next time.

*I ended up with a quarter cup or so of pumpkin purée left over, I plan to try to make a pumpkin glaze as well. I'm told, though, that I like my food a bit richer/more flavourful than most people. YMMV.

Apple Chai Glaze

Ingredients
6 - 8 medium apples
1 cup sugar
1 cup chai tea

Chop up your apples, and skins on put them in a bowl. I chopped them into quarters and then the quarters into about 1" pieces.

Add your cup of sugar, and pop them in the fridge for one hour to mascerate. When you take them out, there will be a load of liquid mixed in with the apples, and they'll be a bit browned.

I did this in my slow cooker. Turn it to medium and let your apples cook for about an hour. Then add one cup of brewed chai tea, and cook for another hour or so. If you're doing this on the stovetop, cook it to a temperature of 220F, then turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes, until the apples are soft enough to blender.

Go to town with your blender, hand blender thingie, or food processor. You want as few chunks as possible.

Boil some canning jars, and fill them with appley goodness. This makes about 3 1-cup jars.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Ingredients

3 eggs
2 cups pumpkin puree
1 cup cream
1 loaf bread
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup margerine (or butter)

In a bowl, mix the margerine, sugar, eggs, pumpkin, and cream, then add the bread, cut into 1" cubes, until completely combined. I like it a bit dry, so I ended up adding another 4 slices of bread I had in the pantry in addition to the loaf.

Bake for 25 minutes at 350C. As it turns out, my oven temperature gauge is about 50 degrees off. So I got an oven thermometer! You can see it hanging from the bottom of the rack, there. $4 for perfect cupcakes, a steal.

When a toothpick comes out clean, they're done. Let them cool for about 10 minutes.