Apple Streusel Inside-Out Cake

This is an amalgamation of two recipes and two ideas... I was asked, by my mother, to make a dessert for a dinner we were having that would use up some apples we had lingering in the fridge. There were only three - so not enough for baked apples... and I didn't feel like making Apple Pie en miniature either... So apple cake? Yeah - I like apple cake. I love the streusel topping! But... I want something more - I want to make it interesting! I know- what about cheesecake/frosting on the inside?!

I combined and played with two recipes to make this one, inside-out cake the first was Catherine Bell's 'Apple Spiced Streusel Coffee Cake' and the second came from a cookbook written by a family friend the recipe was called 'Chocolate Surprise Muffins'. The muffins have a surprise, cheesecakey centre that I recreated for this cake. Which is not, by the way, a diet food. By any stretch of the imagination!

The result was a tasty cake with a delicious, crunchy topping and a surprising, creamy centre - well worth recreating! Though I do say so myself...

Amazing Not-Too-Sweet Cream Cheese Icing

Computer Board Brownie Birthday Cake...

...Carrot Cake Cupcake...

...Red Velvet Cupcakes... 

...a little Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

...Big Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

...and a slice of that big ol' Red Velvet Birthday Cake...

What do all these cakes have in common? (Aside from the fact most of them are Red Velvet...)

You know it! Cream Cheese Icing... which is, basically, the bestest, most yummiest kind of frosting in the world... along with all the other kinds of frosting, off course!

Now, the problem a lot of people have with frosting is that it is really, really sweet... a direct result of all the icing sugar needed to make it stiff and fluffy... and not just butter or cream cheese with a bit of vanilla stirred in.

You'll often see question in the comments section "But *insert type of frosting here* is really sweet and it hurts my teeth... is there any way to make it less sweet?" and the answer is often "No - it's sweet because of the icing/confectioner's/powdered sugar... and you need all that sugar to get the right texture for the frosting"...

But... there is something else in your pantry with a very similar texture to icing sugar... and it isn't sweet... what I'm thinking of is... CORNFLOUR!!! (also know as cornstarch, I believe?)

Now, I'm not saying I'm the first to come up with this theory... but as far as I came up with it all by myself. :) And it really works for me! I just take out one 1/4 of the icing sugar the frosting recipe calls for and sub in that same quantity of cornflour... et voila! Frosting with the same texture you need but not as sweet as you dread...

I wouldn't sub any more than a quarter of the sugar for flour because then you start to taste it a little bit, which is kinda average. But a 1/4 or less and you have the same taste, only less sweet. Excellent!

Read on for my converted recipe for cream cheese icing...

EDIT: I have successful used this method for buttercream frosting too!

Carrot Cupcakes (with Cream Cheese Icing)

This recipe hasn't remodeled for cup-caking purposes - so, if you wanted to make a  full sized cake, or muffins? all you need to do is a adjust the cooking times and you're good to go!

The recipe is adapted from the one Moll Katzen features in her Moosewood Cookbook I've played around with the quantity of sweetener, the kinds of spices and halved the recipe overall. Finally I topped these little babies off with my delicious cream cheese icing (which I'll feature in another post...) and little icing carrots (I'd meant to use the walnuts I'd omitted from the batter - but I got carried away!)

Aren't they the cutest?!

I took them with me on a picnic where they were very well received. Flavoursome, moist and not too sweet (a trick of that mysterious icing) because they contain both wholemeal flour AND carrots they've got to be good for you, right?

A delicious cross section...

If you've got the stuff with which you can bake in your flat anyway - there's nothing particularly prohibitive about this recipe... if you're not living in a baking friendly flat - try these when you get home!

If you have to give the cream cheese icing a miss (not always a flat friendly ingredient)  they're almost as good on their own - or a simple drizzle of lemon juice and icing sugar would be a suitable substitute.