Toffee Apple Cupcakes

With Halloween done and dusted my attention has turned towards Bonfire Night and of course the cakes that I want to make to celebrate. For this little project, I could have gone down the decoration route with firework inspired icing, but what I really wanted was to make some really tasty seasonal cakes. Toffee apples are synonymous with the 5th November and I just happen to love the flavour combination so my theme was set.
The cake I made is a dark brown sugar victoria sponge with grated bramley apple stirred through. I added some cinnamon and nutmeg to the batter also. The frosting is a buttercream with toffee sauce beaten through it, I reduced the amount of icing sugar to avoid sugar overload (well kind of). The bramleys work so well, you need that sharpness to offset the sweetness of the icing. To finish the cakes I made some little sugarpaste apples, I think a wafer thin apple crisp would look lovely too!