Week 9: Pumpkin Cupcakes

Hi all,

I haven't baked in forever!  I love to bake in the fall and the winter, especially at Halloween as I feel like that's a neglected baking holiday (although, it looks like more and more people are baking for Halloween from all the stuff I see in Target, Wal-Mart, Michael's, and Joann's, but I digress).

I am heading off to brunch today with some of my girlfriends and said I would bring dessert, as I needed a blog for this week anyway!  I have seen the 2 ingredient cake mix and pumpkin filling EVERYWHERE, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  I'm sorta surprised I'm only just hearing about it since it looks like the original from Robin Sue at Big Red Kitchen has been posted since 2008!!!  If I also had the mason jars that I didn't see the point in buying right now, I woulda baked these bad boys in there (scroll down her blog for ideas), but cupcakes it will be.  I really wanted to make the apple cider glaze that she made with the cake, but I figured since I was doing cupcakes, I'd go with some Cream Cheese Frosting.  Of course, I can't find my recipe that I liked anywhere.  So I figured the lovely pinners at Pinterest could help me out.  Low and behold, this one recipe from Not So Humble Pie kept popping up and getting repinned, I figured it had to be good, especially since she uses this recipe for a whole bunch of stuff on her website.  So here we go.

Pins that inspired-

http://pinterest.com/pin/357157023/

http://pinterest.com/pin/367558829/

Let me tell you, the prep time took longer than the rest of this.  SO EASY (ok the frosting was a bit of a challenge because I didn't realize you had to WHIP the heavy cream, but I'll address that later).

Here are my ingredients-
1 Box of Betty Crocker Yellow Cake (really, you can use any cake.  I had one friend do this with chocolate and another who used Spice Cake.  The list really goes on)
1 15oz Can of Libby's Pumpkin (you can use whatever you want for the pumpkin, the Libby's was there.  Again, I've seen variations that use other pie fillings and yogurt)

So, I preheated the oven to 350 while I was out walking the pooch.  When I got back in, I lined my cupcake pans.

Next, I opened up the cake mix and then poured in the pumpkin and mixed for 2 minutes.  Now, those of you who made the cinnamon pancakes, the consistency is about the same.  VERY thick!  I filled the cupcakes up about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way up.  I only got 18 cupcakes out of this as opposed to the usual 24.  I did notice these bad boys rise a tad more too.  I baked for about 19 minutes (tested with toothpick to make sure the toothpick came out clean).  I took them out and let them cool.

Next, the cream cheese frosting.  I only made half the recipe that Not So Humble Pie made and all was well.
3/4 c powdered sugar (you can add more to make a little stiffer so it's easier to pipe if you want to be fancy)
8oz of cream cheese
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
1/2 c heavy cream

So because I'm super awesome, I did not read the recipe all the way through before making.  Here is my suggestion.  You should make the whipped cream first.  You need to whip it until it forms stiff peaks (aka whipped cream).  Then you'll incorporate that into the rest of the frosting. I'll share what I did.

First, beat with a paddle attachment, the cream cheese, powdered sugar (which I did not sift b/c I tend to think the frosting comes out a little off, but to each his own), and vanilla until smooth and no lumps.  Then I saw I had to actually turn the heavy cream into whipped cream.  For other recipes I had normally just poured it straight in, not so much.  So I tried to actually use a whisk and that was going to take forever.  Luckily, I did not use my whisk attachment, but I did use my actual bowl that fits on the KitchenAid.  I didn't want to empty out the already sitting frosting because I was going to have to beat this all together anyway so, I stood there and held the bowl under the KitchenAid until I got my stiff peaks.  If Scott hadn't already left for the day, I would have made him take a picture because I looked ridiculous.  Anywho, when that was all done, I incorporated the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture and very briefly (like less than a minute) beat the two mixtures together.  I let the frosting set up in the fridge for a bit.

Because I was running late (as per usual), I decided everyone could frost their own cupcakes!

Overall, I think this was super easy and came out really well.  It isn't a normal cupcake consistency (as one of my friends said, it was a tad crumbly), but it was still really good!  I'd say definitely try this one out :)