Caramel Apple Muffins

I recently published a recipe for Caramel Apple muffins on my Dutch blog and have since gotten a few requests to translate the recipe. Your wishes are my command! Plus, it would be plain mean of me to not give you guys this awesome recipe!
I was having major sweet cravings a few days ago when I remembered a jar of Confiture de Lait I had purchased in Bourgogne. Before having the chance to dream up a recipe, I had to check this out for myself, which basically meant I had to open that jar and dig into it with a spoon, first. For those of you who don't know, Confiture de Lait is a sort of Dulce de Leche, but in my opinion, just a bit thinner and slightly less sweet. I hear French children sometimes get it after school on a bit of bread as a treat. It also makes a great pancake topping. Perhaps it was the weather, but after my initial taste, I started having visions of one of my favorite Halloween treats- caramel apples! With that idea in mind, I came up with these utterly moist, sweet, but not too sweet Fall treats. Hope you like them!

Caramel Apple Muffins

*250g flour
*150g blond cane sugar
*2 tsps cinnamon
*1 tbsp baking powder
*1/2 tsp soda
*pinch of salt
*3 small apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped
*2 eggs
*1 tsp vanilla extract
*150ml milk
*65ml corn oil
*12 tsps Confiture de Lait, or Dulce de Leche, plus extra to ice the muffins

Preheat oven to 200C and prepare your muffin pan. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, salt and cinnamon in a bowl. Add in the apples and stir to coat them with the mixture. In a jug beat milk, oil, eggs and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to the dry and mix gently. Use about 1 tbsp of the batter for each muffin. Then top with a tsp confiture de lait and another tbsp batter. Bake the muffins 20-25 minutes. Ice them with some confiture while they are still warm so that it sort of seeps into them.

Makes 12 muffins.

NOTE: The confiture de lait doesn't work the same way jam would when used as a muffin filling. The gooey syrup rather disappears into the sponge giving it a bit of extra sweetness around the center!