I had lovely jar of quality apple sauce staring at me from the back of the fridge. It was making feel guilty. Twice in one week I craved the sauce hard core, so I bought a jar and then ate it only once.
It was so yummy why did I not want it? Either way, at this point, the apple sauce really needed to be cooked to be safely consumed. Cooked into something like sauce for pork chops would be ideal, but since I had no pork chops and plenty of flour, I thought baking might fit the bill.
As I was brushing up on using applesauce instead of oil in baking I noticed that you could eliminate most of the ‘fresh’ items (egg, milk, etc) in favor of apple sauce. If you substitute shortening for the butter, then all of the ingredients can be found in a pantry. Trade out the butter for vegan margarine and you have a cruelty free cake. Piecing together and tweaking a few generic recipes I came up with Apple Strudel Muffins. These are super tasty, moist, and not too sweet. Apple cakes that are perfect for breakfast or dessert. Yields 1 dozen.
- 1/2c butter, softened (sub vegan butter)
- 1/4c brown sugar
- 3/4c flour
- 1ts baking soda
- 1/4t salt
- 1/2t cinnamon
- 1/2t nutmeg
- Pinch clove
- 1 1/4c applesauce
- 1/2t almond extract
- 1/2t vanilla
Cream the butter and the sugar. Sift together the dry ingredients. Alternating, add the dry ingredients and the applesauce to the butter mix. Stir in the almond and vanilla extracts. Portion batter into muffin tins and top with strudel before baking.
Strudel topping
- 2Tb butter, soft
- +2Tb candy chips (I like white chocolate, peanut butter and butterscotch chips)
- 1/2c brown sugar
- +2 Tb ground flax
- 1/2c chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts, cashew etc)
Mix together and then sprinkle on top of muffins. Bake for approx 12 min @375 or until the edges are brown and a tooth pick comes clean. Cool cakes in the pan, they can be fragile when warm.
Nancy Warner 