Happy Birthday Aunt Sal (Part 2)

I have had this pumpkin butter sitting in my pantry for kind of a long time. 

Many times, I have thought Hmmm....what can I make with this? But since I have never really had pumpkin butter, I had no great ideas. (The recipe idea on the jar said to make pumpkin soup, but that doesn't really sound like my idea of a good soup).

I have also been wanting to use my fair trade baking cocoa (bought from the fabulous Greenheart shop):

As I was wondering what kind of real birthday cupcakes to make for Aunt Sal (as opposed to the "fake" ones for the kids at school), suddenly a fantastic combination idea popped into my head - chocolate cupcakes with pumpkin butter filling and cream cheese frosting. (Wow, I felt like a real baker - being inspired by ingredients and just making up recipes on the spot!)

Since I am not a real baker, however, I did have to look up some recipes. I found this one for chocolate cupcakes. And while I was searching for cupcake recipes, I found a really good spiced cream cheese frosting recipe. It was so good, I think you will all want to make it, so instead of just the link, here's the actual recipe (from pinchmysalt.com):

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

1/4 C. unsalted butter, softened

2 C. powdered sugar

1/4. t. vanilla extract

1/8 t. ground cinnamon

1/8 t. fresh ground nutmeg

Basically all you do is mix all of the ingredients together. Yum! (I did not save the leftovers of this to eat like fudge later, but I may or may not have squirted some of it directly into my mouth from the frosting gun (after frosting the cupcakes of course!)

Instead of using my normal weird orange coring thing to scoop out the middle, then fill the cupcakes, I decided to try something new. The frosting gun has a skinny, pointy tip, like this...

So I put the pumpkin butter in the gun, then poked it into the cupcake and smooshed some out. It was kind of tricky because I couldn't see how much went into the middle of each cupcake, but when the top of the cake started to bubble and break open, I figured there was enough inside!

Then I frosted them, which by the way, if you are frosting cupcakes, I found out it is a BAD idea to leave them in the tins, because afterwards, you will have to take them out and you might mess up the frosting. Just a little tip for you!  Next I put a candy corn on the ones with pumpkin butter inside. Some I left unfilled, just in case they didn't turn out quite as tasty as I thought they would be!   



We took them to Cracker Barrel to celebrate Aunt Sal's birthday, and I think they were a success! Here is the birthday girl, enjoying her cupcake...

Happy Birthday!