Cooking Show: Fall Baking! Cranberry Cream Cheese Muffins, Apple Bread with Caramel Icing

We recently filmed an episode of the cooking show with a "Fall Baking" theme.

I knew that I wanted to share my apple bread recipe.  As I was picking out apples in the supermarket, a fellow shopper started asking me if I was going to use the apples for the cooking show.  I told her yes, I am going to make apple bread and she said something like, "why don't you make something like caramel apples, something for people like me who don't cook?"

I kept a straight face and said, GREAT IDEA, while inside my head I was thinking hmmmm...if only she knew what a hassle it can be to make caramel apples.  The last time I made caramel apples was the last time (about twenty years ago) because it was such a messy ordeal.

My friends, Kerry and Kelly, joined me in my kitchen and we made Apple Bread with Caramel Icing, Cranberry Cream Cheese muffins and the aforementioned Caramel Apples.

Apple Bread with Caramel Icing

Just look at this bread!  Chunks of apples in the bread, completed with a perfect caramel icing on top.

Cranberry Cream Cheese Muffins

Made with fresh cranberries, these muffins are so good. The cream cheese adds a nice texture; dense, but not too heavy.

And here are our caramel apples.  Aren't they just, uh, beautiful?

They tasted absolutely fine.  We melted our caramel, melted our chocolate, dipped in caramel, drizzled with chocolate, sprinkled with an assortment of toppings and then sliced the apples into wedges because it is the least-messy way to indulge.

Kelly and Kerry had never made caramel apples before and the mood while we filmed sort of went from enthusiastic to OMG, WHY are we doing this?

The reason why we were doing this was because someone in the supermarket had suggested to me that caramel apples would be a good recipe for people who don't like to cook.  I took that suggestion and ran with it, if only to prove that sometimes cooking is easier than not cooking.

Kelly and Kerry both agreed that both the apple bread and the cranberry muffins were much easier to make than the caramel apples!

My final thoughts are 1. that an array of fun toppings and an assortment of tantalizingly decorated apples may make for a beautiful picture on Pinterest, but the reality of preparing those apples is an effort in futility, and 2. if you are craving a caramel apple, save yourself the frustration of making it
and simply buy one that's already made!

If you still feel that you may want to give it a try for yourself, click here for the printable recipe--a recipe that I reluctantly wrote and still did my best to dissuade whomever reads it from ever attempting to make these little fruits of frustration.

Even though we didn't prepare this recipe on-camera, if you watched the show you may have noticed that Kelly, Kerry and I were sipping on pumpkin martinis!  Click here to be taken to my blogpost where you can find the recipe.