The Cream Puff Lady: Happy Halloween....

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Happy Halloween....

I love this time of year. Halloween is the holiday kick-off from now until we ring in new year. I loved it as a little girl, and I still love it now. Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here and gone before we know it. It all goes by so fast.

I put together this fun Halloween video with a few safety tips I found on the CDC website to help keep your festivities fun and safe, and I included a delicious recipe from a previous blog post. All of my friends - with and without a badge - just love them. See below or click here for the original post.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 (3.4 oz) package Jello brand instant butterscotch pudding mix

2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt (optional...I did not use in mine)

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1 cup butter, room temperature (2 sticks)

1 cup white sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

4 eggs, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla

1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
Paper cupcake liners
2 muffin tins (holds 12 cupcakes) * Recipe makes 24 cupcakes. I do not recommend halving the recipe, but make all 24. They will be eaten!

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two muffin tins (12 ea) with 24 paper muffin/cupcake liners.
Whisk together the flour, pudding mix, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ground ginger, allspice, and cloves in a bowl; set aside.
Beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. The mixture should be noticeably lighter in color. Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to blend into the butter mixture before adding the next. Beat in the vanilla and pumpkin puree with the last egg. Stir in the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated. Place one paper liner in each muffin space. Pour the batter into paper cupcake liner. (see my notes below)
Bake in the preheated oven until golden and the tops spring back when lightly pressed, about 20 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack. NOTE: I used a double-oven and put one tin in each oven. If you have a single-oven, I would probably bake one tin at a time. I’m not sure how evenly it would cook w/ two tins in one oven, so use your own judgment there.
After the cupcakes are completely cool, frost them with the cinnamon cream cheese icing.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing (Delicious!)

Ingredients:

1 (8 oz) package cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup butter, softened

3 cups confectioners' sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions:

Beat the cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer in a bowl until smooth. Beat in the confectioners' sugar a little at a time until incorporated. Add the vanilla and ground cinnamon. Beat until fluffy. NOTE: You may need to add a little more confectioners' sugar to thicken the icing. Try it with 3 cups first, and then add more if you want the icing to be thicker, but not too much, as you don't want it so sweet it won't compliment the taste of the cupcake. I did add a little more, but not much. Make sure the cupcakes are completely cool before icing them.

Notes:

The first time I made this, I panicked because after I stirred in the flour, the batter was VERY thick and was NOT ‘pourable’ as the instructions given to me called for. I scooped the mixture out using a spoon.
The second time I made this, I used a scoop like this and it went much, MUCH faster. I use this scoop for my cream puffs also and it is such a time saver. The scoop size is a 2” circle.
If you use the scoop, put one scoop in each of the 24 cups, then go back with a spoon and evenly distribute the mixture until cups are ¾ filled. Keep swirling the mixture around with a spoon to get the mixture to settle down.
You won't use all of mixture, so don't worry.