Applesauce Fruitcake Cupcakes...

This is starting to look more and more like a cooking blog isn't it?

The truth of the matter is that I'm testing recipes right now... I wanted some really good cupcakes to go in my fruit baskets I hand out at Christmas. These are applesauce fruitcake cupcakes... and they bear absolutely no resemblence to the gummy bricks that you get in the mail called 'fruitcakes'

This is one of my basic recipes...

1 cake mix (use dry without the water, eggs and oil from the box. Just dump the mix into the bowl, and throw the box away. Seriously. Forget the box.)

1 can (or 1 1/2 cups) of any pureed fruit

any chopped dried fruit or nuts you want...

bake at 400 for 20 to 25 minutes.

for this I used

1 yellow cake mix

1 1/2 cups applesauce

1/2 cup chopped dried pineapple

1/2 cup chopped dried cherries

1/2 cup chopped walnuts and I threw in some cinnamon too... just for the heck of it.

It probably would have tasted better with a 'spice cake' mix... and you could use those candied citron things if you want it to be more like a traditional fruit cake... they always freak people out though. No one knows what they actually are. Well I do. They are the candied rind of a relative of the watermelon called citron. If you really wanted to... you could candy watermelon rind and use that... or you could do like my Grandmother did and candy orange, lemon and grapefruit peal. But really, I'm better with any old dried fruit I can find.

These aren't as sweet as most cakes, but they're sweet enough to taste good.

You're also not adding the eggs or oil from the cake mix, so they're considered low-fat... I can't say they low sugar, because the fruit you use may have some sugar in it, especially if canned, and the mix itself has some in it also...

Anyway, have fun.