Apple Cupcakes with Honey Mascarpone Icing

Happy (Jewish) New Year!! For those of you who don't celebrate, one of the key culinary features of the Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) meal is the dipping of apples in honey. We do this to bring sweetness to the year to come.  So, you know, you could take the reasonably healthy route of just dipping apples in honey-- or, you could be me and add a zillion calories to the process by making apple cupcakes with honey mascarpone icing.

Dude-- can we say Worth.The.Calories???????

I'm really quite pleased with myself on this little invention. I have been building this one in my head since last Thanksgiving, when I made this caramel-apple cake. A few months later I got the idea for a mascarpone icing when I saw this recipe on pinterset. From there, I Frankensteined together my creation. So, without further ado.....

Road Trip Apple Pies

Last weekend, my family and I took a mini-road trip from Chicago down to Springfield, IL, to engage in all kinds of nerdy, historical, Lincoln related tourism. (If you didn't already know this, I'm a HUGE history nerd. HUGE.) We mapped a route following the start of historic Route 66 and stopping any/all cheese-ball road side attractions. This included giant Bunyan/muffler-man style statues, small town museums, a 'metal menagerie', and various other roadside oddities. CLEARLY, a trip this awesome in nature needed equally awesome road snacks. Enter the road trip apple pie: a single serving pie wrapped in a driver-accessible, eat-while-driving wrapper. Though slightly tedious to wrap, these are super easy to make and they withstand the road with flying colors.

What's that? You want to see some road trip pictures??? OF COURSE YOU DO!!!!

Slow Cooker Applesauce

I've recently developed a crock pot applesauce obsession. Many of you know I have a lot of fruit/veggie allergies, and apples are among the fruits I can actually eat. Needless to say, I eat a lot of them. I started with the applesauce thing when I overbought on apples and needed to use them before they went bad. This is SO EASY that I now overbuy on purpose and make a pot of this every couple of weeks.

Since this takes about 6-8 hours, I like to do it overnight. I'm gone far longer than 6-8 hours during the day and I hate leaving my crock pot on for 14+ hours at a time, so I've ascribed to the overnight method.  Also, I have a small crock pot (4 quarts). I imagine you could double this and do it in a larger crock pot if you have a lot of people to feed or want to freeze some apple sauce.

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here)
Slow Cooker Applesauce - Yield 5 cups in a 4 quart slow cooker
Adapted from "Spiced Slow Cooker Applesauce" found here.

8 large apples, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon all spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Optional: 1/2 cup brown sugar