Saturday, October 9, 2010

Pumpkin spice

I love autumn.  Especially because I get to drink copious amounts of apple cider, be re-inspired to get out the knitting needles, and eat pumpkin treats. I cannot wait to carve a pumpkin, mostly so I can toast the seeds.

On a recent roadtrip to NY, we made numerous pit stops for Starbuck's pumpkin spice lattes.  I rarely buy Starbuck's pricey coffee, but am so glad I made a concession for this trip.  Delish! 

As I've still got pumpkin spice on the brain, I decided to whip up a batch of pumpkin cupcakes for a friend. I followed Martha's recipe.


It says it makes 18 cupcakes. I ended up with 23 regular-sized cupcakes and 6 mini's. This meant more to share!

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree (approx. 450ml) [or pumpkin pie filling]

Directions:
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice; set aside.
2. In a large bowl [food processor], mix together, brown sugar, granulated sugar, butter, and eggs. Add dry ingredients, and mix until smooth. Mix in pumpkin puree. [Batter go too big here so transfered to large bowl from food processor to mix in pumpkin].
3. Pour batter into muffin tins with cupcake liners [or greased muffin tin], filling each about halfway.
4. Bake at 350F until tops spring back when touched, and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes, rotating pans once if needed. Transfer to a wire rack; let cool completely.
5. Ice with creamcheese icing.  Sprinkle cinnamon on top.
6. Enjoy!

A few modifications:
- I used a food processor for mixing.
- I used salted butter.  Usually i omit salt if I do this, but forgot this time around.  Fortunately, the cupcakes didn't end up tasting overly salty.
- I used pumpkin pie filling instead of straight-up pumpkin.  This meant that extra sugar and spices were added to the cupcakes, but they still ended up tasting great!

These were easy to make and sooo delicious.  Even Agatha couldn't resist checking them out.  She didn't eat any but I'm sure she would be a lover of pumpkin spice, if we let her!

2 comments:

  1. Today I used the juicer you gave me to make orange ginger cranberries - yum!

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  2. Awesome, those sound delicious! I know juicers may not be the most practical items, but it was so cute that I couldn't resist getting it for you!

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