Apple Butter Filled Vanilla Cupcakes: Pinterest Addiction & Love of Autumn

Hi, my name is Diana, and I am a Pinaholic. It has been...4 minutes since I last pinned. If you have no idea what Pinterest is, I'm so sorry that I just told you about it. Please find me on there when you make your account (here I am). In any case, I get so many ideas from pinterest.com and everybody thinks I'm a genius, when really I'm just a copy cat. One of my favorite things about Pinterest is that there are a lot of cupcake ideas on there. One of my favorites during autumn was the apple butter filled vanilla cupcake.

Now I LOVE autumn. A lot of people do. And really, who can resist it? It's so damn pretty! I love the leaves changing colors, the leaves falling off the trees, the leaves blowing around in the wind, the contrast of the leaves against a clear blue sky...I like leaves o_O.

I get into the spirit of autumn September 1. I don't care that it's still summer. I don't care that it's still 80 degrees and not one leaf is red (it's Seattle, 80 is as hot as it gets). Autumn is coming, dammit. It's every where in the stores too, especially if you're a crafty person. You can't step into a Michael's or Jo-Ann's without being bombarded with leaves, pumpkins, and hay.

Everything screams harvest - especially Pinterest. So when those delightful looking apple butter filled vanilla cupcakes kept popping up every time I clicked "see more pins" (just one more page, I swear, then I'll go do something productive with my day) I just had to make them.

Many people had told me that apple butter is quite yummy, but I hadn't tried it myself yet. I trusted their judgement, so I jumped right into this idea. I picked up an organic apple butter and whipped up a batch of  golden vanilla cupcakes from the Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World cookbook. It was very easy to fill the cupcakes with the apple butter. The picture I'd seen of the cupcakes showed that the apple butter had sunk to the bottom of the cupcake; I assumed because the cupcake liners were filled half way, then the apple butter was added, then more cupcake batter was added. So, to avoid the apple butter sinking all the way to the bottom, I added it after I filled the liners as I normally would and just barely buried it. It worked perfectly. The apple butter ended up sinking to the middle of the cupcakes.

For the frosting, I made a vanilla buttercream and then dusted them with cinnamon. When I say I "dusted" them, I mean I accidentally poured an entire jar of cinnamon all over the first few and then dusted the rest. The pictures were taken from the lesson learned. However the over-cinnamoned ones I found to be tastier than the other ones...but, I also really really like cinnamon. In any case, these ended up being the perfect cupcakes for autumn!