Mmmmm…Pumpkin Cupcakes November 21, 2008

Last year for my work Thanksgiving party, I made a pumpkin roll cake.  It was delicious.  When I was hired by my husband’s company to provide their cake for Thanksgiving, I thought of doing it again.  I didn’t though because my company did a potluck and his company is having a professionally catered event and I wasn’t sure how to fancy up the pumpkin roll

Many hours on Flickr have taught me the current popularity of a cupcake tower, so that is the theme I decided to go with.

I originally was going to use the Ginger-Cream filled Pumpkin Cupcakes byChocylit.  I had never cooked with fresh ginger before, it made the whole house smell so good.  Instead of the chocolate ganache I used cream cheese icing.  The cupcakes turned out wonderful but the hint of ginger was so slight, I decided not to fill the cupcakes for my actual order.

The cream cheese icing recipe I originally used didn’t make much icing so instead of fancy swirls, I just spread on the icing on as neatly as I could.  The finished project was not incredibly professional looking, although it was tasty.  I am so glad I did a trial run, one should always practice before trying something new.

I also originally planned to donate the practice batch to the Ronald McDonald House, but forgot to drop them off.  By the time I remembered, the candy corns had started to melt and left orange stripes on the cupcakes.  The other problem is that the nutmeg I sprinkled on top looked more like dirt than decoration.  It was tasty just not the appetizing.

For the second run, I used the Martha Stewart Pumpkin cupcake recipe.  It is delicious and not very complicated.  I used a cookie scoop to make sure I used the same amount of batter in each cupcake.  Two scoops in each resulted in 32 cupcakes instead of the 18 her reciepe states it will yield.

The Wilton recipe ofcream cheese icing was my base.  I ommited the orange juice and zest.  Instead I used vanilla, cinnamon (about 1/2 tsp.), nutmeg (about 1/4 tsp.) and allspice (about 1/4 tsp.).  It made a pretty and delicious icing.

My husband delivered everything to his office so I didn’t see the final set-up.  Here is the practice run I did at home though:

At K-Mart I discovered this handy cupcake carrier.  It uses a cupcake tin for the bottom layer and then has a plastic tray for the second layer.  The lid snaps all the layers together.  It only holds 24 cupcakes, so I had to improvise with a baking sheet for the rest of my cupcakes.