Eat This While You Read That: Amie Gibbons

Welcome back, gentlereaders! Amie asked me nicely if I would be willing to revive the popular series pairing food and books, since she had a book, and a recipe…. and it’s been a long time. I have badly missed this series. It lasted over a year, and I loved doing it. Since her request came at a very good time as we’re settling into the new house, have handed off the old house, the Ginja Ninja has graduated from highschool, I said yes! of course! I’m excited to start doing these again, and I’m going to ask you, readers and fellow authors, if you want to have your book and a dish featured in this series, to reach out and let me know. It’s pretty easy – all I really need is the name of a dish, and a title. No recipe required, as I enjoy the challenge of creating them, but if you want to share a recipe, go ahead. 

Without further ado… 

Apple Champagne Cupcakes

The vivacious and talented Amie Gibbons has shared with me in the past that like me, she bakes when she is blocked on a story. These may be a product of that, I didn’t ask, but they are delicious and simple to make up when you want something sweet, but tart, and a little different. Just like her writing! So check out Psychic Spiral (of Death) or start with the first book in the series, Psychic Undercover (with the Dead).  Her fierce and feminine main character will charm you and the gentle humor will have you chuckling as you accompany this dessert with a sweet and fluffy read. 

A couple of notes here: I used a Granny Smith apple for this recipe, which seems to have been the right choice as you could really taste the apple, and the tartness. I also did not use champagne for the recipe, as she had included in her recipe that you could substitute in a white, sweet wine. We don’t drink champagne, so buying a whole bottle just for this recipe seemed silly. So as I was shopping, I spotted a sweet apple wine, and snagged that. It really worked well in this recipe, and it’s nice enough to drink, too. Tart, sweet… that’s a theme here, isn’t it? 

• 1 stick melted butter
• 1 cups sugar
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 cups milk
• 1/2 cup champagne (or a sweet white wine of your choice like Moscato)
• 2 eggs,
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Mix, then peel and shred 1 apple, and stir that in.

Bake 15 to 18 min at 350.

Will be very dense and chewy.

These did indeed come out very dense, and moist. I might try it again without the two additional egg yolks, just to see what happens. But as it stands, this is closer to pound cake texture than sponge, which I like a lot. I was wondering if it would come out like zucchini bread and the answer to that is, not really. 

Shredding the apple finely probably helped with that. It was juicy, too! I baked these in paper cupcake liners, and a little went in a loaf pan because this would make about 18 cupcakes and I only prepped for 12. The loaf pan, despite being greased, stuck. If you want to bake this as a cake, I’d recommend parchment paper lining for the bottom of your pans. It’s sticky stuff! 

Oh, and the frosting! I made up a cream cheese apple pie spice frosting, and it’s a warm note against the tartness in the cupcake. Very tasty. All I did was add a half-teaspoonful of the apple pie spice mixture to a cream cheese frosting recipe. And I didn’t go heavy on the frosting because both the Ginja Ninja and the First Reader would rather eat naked cupcakes. Which you could totally do with these! 

You can find more Eat This While You Read That recipes here. 

Related posts:

Eat This While You Read That: Ryk Spoor Eat This While You Read That: Amie Gibbons Eat This While You Read That: Martin Shoemaker Eat This While You Read That: G Scott Huggins