Mini Apple Cake Bites

with cinnamon crunch topping

35 min|Easy|Lightly Sweet

These Mini Apple Cake Bites can be a great breakfast treat or an after meal dessert. The cake bites themselves aren't super sweet, so they could be mistaken as apple muffins in the morning, but with a quick addition of powdered sugar or even a drizzle of vanilla glaze, they become a fruity dessert cake!

Hello, I'm Curtis — The photographer and recipe developer behind Digital Food Works. I photograph and produce commercial media in and around Central Florida.

Recipe Notes

*** CINNAMON CRUNCH TOPPING ***

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup crumbled graham crackers
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons butter (cold)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Mix the Cinnamon Crunch Topping
Add all the ingredients to a bowl and using a fork, "cut" the butter into the mix until everything is thoroughly combined. (Just keep pressing down on the butter with a fork until there's no visible signs of butter left.)

Ingredients

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makes

mini cake bites

1 cup diced apples

¹⁄₂ cup cinnamon crunch topping *** (See the "Recipe Notes" section for instructions on making the cinnamon crunch topping.)

for coating the apples

Step by Step Instructions

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Preparation

Preheat oven to 375º F. Coat mini muffin pan with shortening (unless you're sure it's really a "non-stick" muffin pan).

Mix the Dry Ingredients

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt until combined.

Coat Your Apples

In a separate bowl, toss the diced apples and a small amount of extra flour and cinnamon (from the "for coating the apples" step) until the apples are coated.

Fluffy Wet Ingredients

In a third bowl, combine the butter, sugar, egg and vanilla. Mix with an electric hand mixer on medium, until fully incorporated (1 or 2 minutes).

Combine Everything Together

Carefully add the milk to the dry mix along with the the butter mix from above. Stir everything together until combined. "Fold" in the diced apples without mixing, we don't want the flour and cinnamon coating to come off the apples.

Fill Tins and Top

For the photos with this recipe, I used a 24 well mini muffin pan. Dividing the batter evenly resulted in 2/3 full cup wells… which seems about right. These shouldn't rise too much. Add some of the Cinnamon Struesel Crunch Topping on top of each of the Apple Cake Bites.

Bake the Bites

Bake until a toothpick or skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 18-20 minutes.

Cool the Bites

Once slightly cooled, remove each cake bite and place onto a rack or plate to finish cooling.

Additional Notes

For the vanilla drizzle pictured here, I just added a small amount of heavy cream and vanilla extract (about a half teaspoon of each) to some confectioners sugar (starting with a quarter cup), and kept adding and stirring until the mix was the right constancy. The drizzle was then placed in a piping bag and applied to the mini cakes.

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