Apple and Walnut Cupcakes for the Globe

Shakespeare’s Globe on the South Bank has been a huge part of London life for my husband and me. In our first year here, we volunteered as stewards: wearing the maroon tabards and keeping the groundlings standing. Since then, we’ve seen almost all of almost every show (I missed half an hour of Henry IV last year, when at five months pregnant, I fainted five minutes into the performance).

Things have changed somewhat this year because of Baby but on Saturday afternoon, I managed to join some friends for a matinee performance of Hamlet. To celebrate the start of our 2011 season, I made us the Apple and Walnut cupcakes that you can see lined up on the stage here.

My Cake Days book vs app article went up on iPhoneAppCafe.com last week.

The Cake Days cookbook, with its bright pink cover, looks very pretty on my shelf. For now – at least when I want to try out one of the 85 recipes that are also in the app version – I’d say it’ll stay on my shelf.

The Apple and Walnut cupcakes recipe is included in the iPhone application. However, I forgot a very important difference when I was writing my article: printed recipes don’t run out of batteries. While my iPhone charged, I made these cupcakes using the cookbook.

These were the first cupcakes I’ve ever made with chunks in them. In this case, they were rather large chunks of apple and walnuts, which resulted in holes in the cakes and uneven tops. They didn’t look the best, so I was worried about how they would taste.

They tasted fantastic. The combination of cinnamon and apple, walnuts, sugar and cream cheese frosting works amazingly well, resulting in an absolutely delicious end product.

The Globe’s production of Hamlet has received mixed reviews this year: both from the professional critics and from my friends. The cupcakes, however, seemed to receive universal acclaim – including a vote for ‘best cupcake recipe yet’ from my husband.

Using the book or the app, I’ll definitely bake them again.