Pumpkin Cupcakes

After making a Pumpkin Loaf I had half a tin of Pumpkin left and chose to make some pumpkin cupcakes, which proved to be a hit in this house. As they looked pretty and tasted pretty damn good I thought I would share how I made them.

What you will need:

Cake:

220g Plain Flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

135g light brown sugar

2 eggs

1/2 can pumpkin

120g Vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Cream cheese icing:

75g butter

100g cream cheese

Vanilla essence 

175g icing sugar.

To begin with you want to get the boring things out the way: Line the cupcake tin (I used these Orange cases I found in Wilko...to go with the pumpkin was the idea) and pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees.

1. You will need two bowls for this. In one bowl place the flour, bicarb of soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon - mix together and place to one side for now.

2. In another bowl mix together brown sugar, eggs, pumpkin, oil and vanilla until the mixture is remotely smooth.

3. Once everything is mixed, slowly add in the dry ingredients to the wet and mix all together.

Once everything is done place the mixture into the cases and pop into the oven for 15-20 mins.

Icing:

I have never made cream cheese icing before so this was exciting to try.

1. Add the butter into the bowl and mix on its own for a while until its quite smooth.

2. Next add in your cream cheese add in your vanilla and mix - I used a hand mixer (non electric) fast

3. slowly add in the icing sugar to the butter and cream cheese and like before mix everything fast. (You dont have to thats what I did and found it worked better than your usual mixing with a wooden spoon).

3.Place the cream cheese icing into a pipping bag and decorate your cakes, for decorations I found some 'Chocolate beans' by Dr. Oetker and picked out the yellow and orange ones. If you want Halloween decorations for the top of your cakes you get some great Halloween cake decoration in ASDA.

I love these cakes so much, let me know if you try them and what you think.