Apple Streusel

For my first escapade into the world of cupcakes, I chose Apple Streusel. I will admit that I made these cupcakes on a whim and did not have all of the exact ingredients that the recipe called for. The streusel topping was easy to make seeing as I had all of the ingredients that it called for, it turned out just like it should. I hand whipped all of the ingredients in a glass bowl with a plastic spatula. Instead of using Self-rising Flour, I made my own self-rising flour and added about 1/8 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp of baking soda per one cup of unbleached flour. I will also admit to mixing together 2.5 different 4 oz. cups of applesauce in replacement for a normal jar. All of the ingredients came together fairly well; I think that the batter itself is meant to be slightly almost separated due to the texture of the applesauce. I filled the cupcake liners about 2/3 to 3/4 full to use all of the batter the recipe made. Next time, I would probably double the streusel topping because of how it separated on top of the cupcakes while they baked. The 12 cupcakes baked for the full 20 minutes that they were supposed to and came out of the oven golden brown, perfectly done. I left them to set in the silicon cupcake pan for about 4 minutes before placing them on a cooling rack. As I was placing them on the cooling rack, I could feel from the bottoms that they were ridiculously moist. As it turns out, they really were ridiculously moist. The cake itself was not as sweet as I anticipated; there was a flour-tasting undertone, which wasn't a bad thing, but for future reference I would add about 1/4-1/8 of a cup of brown sugar and maybe an extra tbsp of butter. I also think that the recipe relied heavily on the topping to provide the sweetness, which is why I think I'll double the topping next time I try to make these. Overall, this cupcake adventure was a success.