Pumpkin Cupcakes for Autumn
This is my first Sugar High Friday event (and boy am I cutting it close to the deadline)! When Fanny from Foodbeam announced this month’s cupcake theme, I couldn’t resist. While I actually don’t make many cupcakes as this blog is mostly about cakes after all (though that doesn’t seem to stop me from collecting cupcake wrappers) – I do enjoy the occasional quaint cupcake. I deliberated for a while, but I knew I wanted to use some toffee I recently acquired. I’m also a huge fan of pumpkin baked goods, thus the combination of pumpkin cupcakes with toffee buttercream was born. In case you’re wondering what that subtle shimmer is, it’s edible gold dust.
After poring through numerous pumpkin bread/cookie/cake recipes, I decided to use the recipe from Williams Sonoma, and all I can say is yuuuuum……This is a flavorful, moist cupcake recipe with the right blend of spices, raisins, walnuts and crystallized ginger if you like, ideal for Halloween cupcakes, as well. The only difference was that I ran out of canola oil so instead of the full cup I used 1/2 cup of oil plus a stick of melted butter. I also added crystallized ginger chunks.
Click here for Pumpkin Cupcake Recipe
Toffee Buttercream (infamous buttercream recipe adapted from Nick Malgieri/Doree Greenspan)
1 cup granulated sugar
4 large egg whites (1/2 cup)
pinch of salt
3 sticks of unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup of toffee crumbs
Put the sugar, egg whites and salt in a mixer bowl. Place bowl over a plan of simmering water and stir constantly with a whisk until it feels hot to the touch, or about 3-4 minutes. Remove the bowl from the heat.
Working with the whisk attachment or with a hand mixer, beat the meringue on medium speed until it is cool, about 5 minutes. Cut butter into tablespoon size pieces. Switch to the paddle attachment, and add the butter pieces one at a time, beating until smooth. Halfway through adding the butter, let beat for 5 minutes more. The buttercream should come together. Add the remaining half of butter pieces, one at a time. Let beat a few minutes more, then add in toffee crumbs, beating until just evenly incorporated.
Thanks to Fanny for hosting! Look forward to more Sugar High Friday events!
September 26th, 2008 at 4:16 am
They look so cute, and so Autumn colored! I’m sure they were delicious and your house must have smelled wonderfully!
September 26th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
These are so pretty and festive. The frosting sounds heavenly. The ingredients are perfect together :).
September 27th, 2008 at 7:39 am
oh wow, these look amazing! i love pumpkin muffins…the frosting would be perfect on them!
September 27th, 2008 at 8:31 am
They look so yum! Drats I missed the deadline again. I was going to do pumpkin cupcakes as well with ginger frosting. bummer.
September 27th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Uhm, where’s the pumpkin?
September 27th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
The cupcakes are made with pumpkin puree. You can get the recipe by clicking on the link in \”Pumpkin Cupcake Recipe\”.
November 12th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
so how would you rate these cupcakes? how did they taste? i am thinking about making these for the future in laws this weekend…
🙂
November 12th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Stephani – I liked these pumpkin cupcakes a lot. And you can always adjust the spices/raisins/nuts, etc. according to your taste. I think they were much yummier than pumpkin cupcakes I’ve bought from bakeries! Also, I am generally a fan of recipes from Williams Sonoma. I hope you’ll try it and let me know how it goes!