Baking Case File #5: Incredible Pumpkin Cupcakes

These cupcakes are kind of amazing. My brother agrees.

The batter was really great, too. This is my baking helper and friend extraordinaire, K. Seriously, though, this batter is like no other. it’s light and fluffy and sweet but not too sweet, and pumpkiny without being overwhelmingly pumpkiny.

I’ve had my eye on this recipe since at least last pumpkin season, over a year ago. It comes from Smitten Kitchen, and like pretty much everything else Deb makes, it is fantastic. It’s also one of those recipes that seemed out of my league, but as it turns out, it’s quite doable. Having the use of my mom’s KitchenAid standing mixer helped a lot, and it was also a good recipe to try as a team, since there are a number of steps to it. Since I didn’t make any adaptations, it seems unfair to just cut & paste the recipe from the SK blog, so if you want to attempt it yourself, you can find it here, complete with the beautiful frosting roses that Deb created and I did not even attempt. More pictures of K. & my baking after the jump.

The directions called for five minutes of mixing at the beginning, and then more mixing as we added stuff in. One fun fact I learned yesterday: if a recipe calls for buttermilk and you don’t have any, an acceptable substitute is regular milk + vinegar.

Then the doling out of the batter into the muffin tins, and trying to resist eating all of it. While the cupcakes were baking, we whipped up the Maple Cream Cheese frosting.