Spice can take a ready-made or grind in a mortar yourself. We need a teaspoon of mixture of ground spices - nutmeg, cardamom, ginger and cloves. The emphasis is to not take a teaspoon of each spice, and a teaspoon of the MIXTURE. If you don't like spice, reduce the amount by a third, but does not eliminate suggest.

Mix the dry ingredients the dough - flour, baking powder, soda, salt and spices.

Apples to clear, from one Apple to prepare in a blender puree, the other cut into small cubes.

Melt on low heat butter, remove from heat, add butter to the brown sugar and mix well. A small digression. The recipe is sugar Muscovado. This dark brown cane sugar with the taste of molasses, caramel, toffee... different people write about the taste different. I have used brown sugar Demerara brand "Mistral". (Sarhan, honey, repent, and sprinkled ashes on his head - burn me in the flame of a gas burner until the end of his days!)) Looking ahead, I will say that it turned out amazingly delicious - moist, tender and spicy, which, of course, not be achieved using conventional white sugar. (Keep trying?))) Well, we continue the conversation) To get a little closer in taste to Muscovado, I added a tablespoon of molasses. They say you can add liquid chicory, but don't know. If you have not become a happy owner of Muscovado, then you can do brown sugar Demerara, he is everywhere.

Look what a beautiful mass it turns out in the end.

While it is still warm mixture stir in eggs, applesauce, yogurt, cognac, lemon zest and vanilla. Knead well until a homogeneous mass.

Turn the oven on 180 degrees. Pour mixture to flour mixture, add the Apple, diced, and knead well with the mixer at low speed attachments-hooks.

Put the dough in molds. If there is paper of the cuff - use them. In General, the recipe is for 12 cupcakes, I have 6 tins of small size, so I get 15 pieces. Place in oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Readiness check with a wooden stick - it should be dry.

To prepare the cream. Here everything is simple - mix the pack of Philadelphia cheese, 100 g butter, 100 g powdered sugar, vanilla and 3/4 tsp cinnamon. Beat with a mixer for 7-10 minutes. Put into the refrigerator not less than 2 hours. In General, better cupcakes and cream (in a pastry bag) to leave in the morning. Cupcakes are ripe, and the cream is well cooled. And so I did.

When the cream has sufficiently cooled, you can decorate.

The cupcakes turned out just amazing - moist, with a nice touch of spice and caramel flavor of brown sugar, sweet cream and unobtrusive flavor. Recommend!

Store in the refrigerator, but the cream does not spread, holds its shape, and store long will disappear instantly))