"cupcakes" & cupcakes

this winter wonderland is at the shack, taken yesterday afternoon on our way to walk the dog in the rather nippy -19 C weather







i guess we could have left a bit earlier to catch the sun still up (not that it was very high anyway...)







this happens a lot with the dog, he jumps into the snow and starts digging







deeper and deeper. there has to be something extraordinary for him to be digging that deep, right?







his "cupcakes", a.k.a frozen blobs of horse manure. you'd get a very angry growl if you even tried to get close, not to mention trying to take them away. now, imagine it not being this cold and the blobs start melting while he eats them... yes, disgusting... but i guess dogs know what's good for them and what's not!







now to treats for humans... i got this susan tee's cupcake book at xmas and wanted to try a recipe from it today (after another arctic walk with the dog, today it was only -16 C!)








originally i had chosen peanut-butter cupcakes, but since i only had one egg (shame on me!) left, so i had to choose a recipe that required just one egg. luckily there was one in the book, applesauce cupcakes.

since the recipe isn't on the web i won't publish it here. however, there are numerous other applesauce cupcake recipes available. there is a surprisingly small amount of butter in the recipe, which can't be anything but a good thing. the crumble topping does have butter in it...








...i'm thinking (now that i have "tasted" two of the cupcakes i just pulled out of the oven) that cream cheese with cinnamon and brown sugar might work as a topping as well







yes, will definitely try one batch with cream cheese topping






wonder if i could eat another, certain someone won't know how many i made...