Straight up pumpkin? Hmmm, maybe--but we can do better.
Apple? That's certainly a nice fall combo, but all the recipes I found looked too dry and too much like muffins. We can't have that.
Pumpkin apple? Bingo. I found one that looked nice and moist and non-muffiny. I was set....until I realized one flaw: it used (brace yourselves) cake mix. I am morally opposed to using cake mix in a recipe. Luckily, I remembered I had seen a homemade cake mix recipe in one of the blogs I follow, but after doing some fun algebra to figure out the ratio of evaporated milk: milk I would need to replace the milk powder and water I realized that the yield seemed a little off. After more searching, I found a recipe with the appropriate amounts of flour and sugar (and I'm assuming the rest) but realized the amount of water and oils/butter required to make up the cake was different than what the box called for and I got a little nervous...especially since there was a bit of a competition between myself and a friend of mine who was also bringing a pumpkin dish to the potluck. (Ok...I saw it as a competition...he didn't so much.)
Anyway... I was having a seriously hard time deciding whether I should risk the recipe not turning out my using this homemade cake mix which mixes up a little differently than the boxed stuff...or go with what would most likely give me a tried-and-true result. And I needed to win. If I lost to him I would never live it down. So I used the box mix since I didn't have time to test it out with the homemade. If not for the competition, I would have made my pumpkin cake recipe and just added apples, but I was too afraid of failure. So for the first time in years...I used a cake mix. No one would, ever find out...right? After a stupid error on my part my competitor did ask me flat out...so I had to tell him the truth. I will never live this one down.
Anyway, next time I'll try this without a boxed mix. But until then, this is what I did:
First, make your pumpkin pie. You can use any recipe you like, but don't worry about the crust. I used the one on the side of the the roundy's pumpkin can since it was there and all.
Mix together:
- 3 eggs
- 1 c sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp cloves
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ginger
- 1 (15 oz) can pumpkin
- 1 c evaporated milk
Or, if you have a pumpkin pie on hand, just scoop it out sans crust and you're golden.
Now to make your cupcakes, mix together:
- 3 small apples: peeled, cored and diced (The recipe called for one medium apple, but I had a ton of little apples to use up still from apple orcharding)
- 1 boxed yellow cake mix
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon ground clove
- 1 15 oz can of pumpkin
- 1 1/3 cups water
Once the cupcakes are cooled, take your pumpkin pie, scoop it into your mixing bowl and mix it for about a minute to make it all nice and smooth and homogenized. Then put that into a pastry bag and frost them all pretty like.
I decided they needed a little more pizazz so I whipped up a fifth recipe of pie crust and cut out little leaves, baked those up while the cupcakes were finishing up (so 350 for about 10 minutes??) and stuck them on top. Told you I was ridiculous.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, not only were all my cupcakes gone while he still had 4 of his pumpkin bars left, but 100% of the two people I polled agreed mine was better. Although apparently "just because [he doesn't] dress up his desserts like a flower garden doesn't mean they don't taste as good" Methinks someone is a sore loser...
Pumpkin pie frosting idea: Cupcake Project
Cupcakes adapted from: Little bitty bakes
No comments:
Post a Comment