Pumpkin Cupcakes

So.  The other day, I was faced with a problem I'd never had.  Bags of ground pumpkins.  The story is, is that Mum was here in Auckland for a little while to take care of me while I was in the hospital and was busy making me all sorts of stuff with all sorts of stuff which included pumpkins.  She bought one huge pumpkin and had just too much leftover so froze all of it and left me with it.  I scrap a lot of recipes but never anything to do with pumpkins.  But I was up for the challenge.  Lucky for me, it is autumn in the Northern Hemisphere which means many pumpkin recipes floating around the foodie blog world so it wasn't hard to score some scrumptious-looking recipes.  I went with How to Eat a Cupcake's pumpkin cupcake recipe.  And I am now in love with pumpkins in bakings.  Yu-Ummm.  These were unbelievably moist and I absolutely loved the spice it had with all the cinnamon and the etecetra's.  I added white chocolate bits to half of the recipe and toasted walnuts to the other half.  How to Eat a Cupcake had toasted pecans which I imagine would be divine as well.  These will also go fabulous with cream cheese frosting.  


Pumpkin  Cupcakes
Cupcake recipe adapted from How to Eat a Cupcake who adapted it from Cupcakes by Shelly Kaldunski

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped or white chocolate

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350°F. Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper or foil liners.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and nutmeg. In another bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, sugar, oil, and eggs. Add the flour mixture and whisk to combine completely. Stir in the chopped walnuts or white chocolate.

Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, filling each about three-fourths full. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean, 22-24 minutes (my oven took 17 minutes).  Let the cupcakes cool in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Transfer the cupcakes to the wire rack and let cool completely, about 1 hour.
Spoon the glaze over the cupcakes and serve.