Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

 

I can’t believe it is almost the end of October and I haven’t shared any pumpkin recipes! But I will change that right now.

Today also happens to be the 5^th week of 12 Weeks of Christmas Treats. It is so insane to think that Christmas is that close!

So back to all things pumpkin: I always buy several cans of pumpkin puree because of all the ideas I have to use it with. And how any of those ideas are executed? Only a small fraction, which is sad because fall is the best time of all to bake. If it were acceptable to make things with pumpkin, maple, and molasses all year round I would be a very happy girl.

So for the 5^th week of Christmas Treats I’m sharing these lovely pumpkin cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting (two seasonal flavors wrapped into one!

 

 

I wasn’t too excited about these cupcakes when I took my first bite, but that all changed the second day. I think the flavors just needed time to soak in and deepen. The cupcake because super moist and perfectly spiced. One of my favorite things about nutmeg is the little specks is leaves in the batter it is added to. It promises and delivers great things every time.

The frosting was so creamy. I love a good cream cheese frosting; if I were only allowed to have one type of frosting for the rest of my life, it would be of the cream cheese variety. Although with this recipe I think I should have added a tad more powdered sugar to stiffen it up a bit and a little more maple syrup to make it taste more mapley.

Once again, thank you Brenda for hosting such a wonderful bloghop.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Slightly adapted from Diethood

Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

Cupcakes

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. nutmeg

1 cup sugar

½ cup canola oil

2 large eggs, room temperature

1 cup pumpkin puree

2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Frosting

6 oz. cream cheese, softened

2 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened

2/3 cup powdered sugar

½ tsp. pure maple syrup

¼ pure vanilla extract

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a standard 12 cup cupcake tray with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar and oil until smooth. Stir in the eggs, one at a time, until completely incorporated. Mix in the pumpkin puree and stir until combined. Stir in the vanilla. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and fold the batter until just combined.

Evenly distribute the batter into the prepared cupcake tray. Bake on the center rack for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle. Allow the cupcakes to cool in the tray for 5 minutes before removing them to a cooling rack to cool completely.

To make the frosting: beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Gently add the powdered sugar and mix until smooth. Stir in the maple syrup and vanilla until completely incorporated. Frost cupcakes as desired.

Cake Slice Bakers - August 2013: Maple Pecan Chiffon Cake

So much is happening today! For one, today is my parent's 20th anniversary of being married! Which I think is pretty dang awesome for today's day in age where everyone is getting divorced or separated left and right (or does that only seem to be celebrities?). Today also marks my best friend's 19th birthday! Happy birthday, Z! And I can't forget about the Cake Slice Baker's cake reveal of the month!

August's cake happens to be a chiffon cake. I have never made a chiffon cake or angle food cake, yet I have the pan, odd. I have had the pan for several years with the best intentions of baking with it, but I was just never inspired. So needless to say I was happy when my choice of the maple pecan chiffon cake won. That is until a certain incident happened....

You see this pan was stored in my closet because there was no room in the kitchen. You should also know I am deathly afraid of spiders. My dad says I need to see a psychiatrist. I say he needs to realize that spiders are plotting my death. 

Anyways, when I went to get the pan from my closet a spider decided it would be a great time to make it's presence known to me. I screamed and threw the pan at the wall and I'm pretty sure I had my very first heart attack. God, I despise spiders.

Anyways after about 30 minutes of scrubbing that pan clean I got to baking. I thought it was a little weird not to grease the pan, but I must follow those kind of directions. The cake baked up all nice, tall, and fluffy. It looked so beautiful; I was so proud of myself.

Getting the cake out was kind of tricky though because I didn't know how to get the cake out without manhandling it. I finally managed it with only a few finger indentations on the top. But nothing a little frosting can't fix.

Oh my gosh the frosting is so delicious! It's basically the same frosting from my rice krispie cake, but I wasn't as scared about browning the butter this time, so the frosting had this intense nutty flavor! So good. And the cake was so delicious! It had this perfect brown sugar taste. I did omit th pecans because no one in my family is a big fan of the nuts and I knew no one would eat it if it had nuts in it. But no matter, the entire thing was gone within three or four days. So I will most certainly be making this again!

Maple Chiffon Cake
Slightly adapted from Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson
Makes 1 10 inch tube pan

Ingredients
2 cups minus 3 1/2 tbsp. unbleached all-purpose flour*
4 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch*
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
6 egg yolks, room temperature
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup water
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
8 egg whites, room temperature
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar
1 recipe Brown Butter Icing (below)

*or substitute 2 1/4 cups cake flour

Directions
Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line the bottom of a footed 10 cup tube pan. Leave the pan ungreased.

Sift together the flour and cornstarch 3 times. Whisk together the sifted cake, baking powder, salt, and brown sugar in a medium bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the yolks, oil, maple syrup, water, and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until smooth.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk the egg whites on medium speed until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and increase the speed to high. Whisk until soft peaks form. turn the mixer speed down to low and gradually pour in the sugar. Turn the mixer back up to high and whip until firm, glossy peaks form.

Fold a third of the whites into the batter using as few strokes as possible. Fold in the rest of the whites until incorporated. Gently pour the batter into the lined (NOT GREASED) pan. Bake until the top springs back when gently touched and the top is a light golden brown, about 50 minutes.

Allow to the cake to cool upside down, so the cake is resting on its feet. If your pan does not have feet, use a wine bottle the support the chimney part of the cake. Once the cake has completely cooled, take a long, thin knife and run it along the edge of the pan. Gently knock to pan against a hard surface until it slide out. Top with the icing and serve. Note: when cutting, use a serrated knife and use a sawing motion so as not the crush the delicate cake.

Brown Butter Icing

Ingredients
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1/4 cup whipping cream, cold
1/2 tbsp. pure vanilla extract
pinch of salt

Directions
Put the sugar in a medium bowl and set aside. Melt the butter in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Keep heating until the butter turns from a lemony yellow to a dark golden brown. Once the butter has browned and has a nutty smell, add it to the sugar (do this while the butter is hot). Add the cream, vanilla, and salt. Whisk until smooth. As the butter cools the frosting will thicken. Once the frosting has thickened to the desired consistency, spread over the top of the cooled cake.

Brown Sugar Brown Butter Birthday Cake

Birthdays are so much fun to celebrate, especially when they are close to holidays. Maybe I’m wrong, but it makes your birthday seem extra special when it’s on a special event, I think. However, I have met some people that hate having their birthdays near the holidays, especially Christmas, because the day isn’t about them and Christmas and Birthday presents are intermingled and all that. Everyone in my family has a birthday close to the holidays, well everyone except my sister. My dad was born around Father’s day, which means every once in a while he gets to have an extra special day of peace and quiet; my dog was born on Halloween, which means she doesn’t get chastised for eating people food (it’s her little birthday treat); I was born 12 days after Christmas (the Epiphany); and my mom was born around Thanksgiving, and this year her birthday happened to fall on the 4^th Thursday of the month, Turkey Day!

My dad asked me if I wanted to make my mom’s cake this year or should we just get it from the store. I opted for baking the cake because I don’t like the store frosting and I can manipulate whatever flavors I want into the cake. The first thing that came to mind for my mom was a brown sugar cake. I don’t know what it is about brown sugar, but I absolutely love it!

So, on Thanksgiving morning, I woke up at 6:15 am in order to get to work on her birthday cake. The recipe I used would make a 3 layer cake, and I figured that because it’s Thanksgiving, no one is going to have room for a 3 layer cake, so I cut the recipe into thirds and because not everything cuts evenly, I apologize in advance for the wonky amounts of ingredients. Also, I made this cake in an 8.5x4.5 in loaf pan to accommodate for only four people eating it.

The recipe called for brown butter, which I have only worked with brown butter once before, and I can’t remember which recipe it was. I was a little nervous about the butter burning, so I think I took it off the stove a little too early because it was more of a honey color, but no matter. The batter came together perfectly. It was probably the silkiest batter I have ever laid my eyes on and it poured into the loaf pan like a dream.

The final product was even better! I was a little anxious about it being over done because I had to experiment with cooking times on a count of me using a different pan, but when I sliced into the cake after the meal, it was perfectly moist and soft and everything a cake should be! The taste was fabulous too. Even after such a big meal, the cake was halfway gone in mere minutes. This cake was seriously addicting, so go on, what are you waiting for? Go make this cake for someone you love or you could make it for yourself and not share.

Brown Sugar Brown Butter Birthday Cake

adapted from And Now for Something Completely Delicious

Ingredients
1 ¼ cup unbleached all purpose flour
½ tsp + 1/8 tsp baking soda
1/3 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
¾ cup brown sugar
5 tbsp unsalted butter
½ cup
1 egg + 1 egg white
2/3 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a saucepan over medium low heat, melt the butter completely. Then let it continue to cook until it turns golden brown in color. Don’t stir, but swirl the pan periodically to ensure it browns easily. Keep your eyes on it, you don’t want it to burn. When browned, put in the fridge to solidify. This will take about 20-30 minutes. You want the butter to still be soft, but not liquid.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour 8.5x4.5 in loaf pan.
3. Sift the all purpose flour a few times. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the sifted flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add the brown sugar, brown butter, and ¼ cup + 2 tbsp of the buttermilk. Mix on medium speed until smooth.
4. In another bowl, whisk together the egg, egg white, the remaining 2 tbsp buttermilk, and vanilla extract. Add to the mixer in two additions, mixing after each until just combined. You will need to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Then turn the mixer up to medium high and beat for a few minutes until smooth.
5. Pour batter into prepared loaf tin. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 28 minutes. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, before inverting onto a cake pan to cool completely before glazing.

Maple Glaze

from Joy the Baker

Ingredients
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 tsp maple syrup
2 tbsp milk

Directions

1. Dump the confectioners sugar into a medium-sized bowl. Pour on the maple syrup and milk. Stir with a spoon until the glaze falls down in a ribbon. Set the cake over parchment paper (or serving platter if you wish the have luscious pools of glaze surrounding your cake) and spoon over the cake, letting the glaze drip down the sides. Let stand for a few minutes for the glaze to harden.

Maple Swirl Biscuits

This week made me smile. On Wednesday, we had the first snow (that stuck) of the season. In Colorado, it is basically a law that it has to snow around Halloween; I think there has been one year out of the nine that I have lived here where it didn’t snow the week or the day of Halloween. We ended up getting about five inches of snow over night and the very next morning, we had about a two hour power outage at the school, you can imagine how fun that was.

Anyways, even though I love the snow, I hate being out in the cold and getting wet. I have poor blood circulation in my body which causes me to be cold 24/7 (even when it’s 90 degrees outside). I would much rather stay in my PJs, curled up on the couch with a blanket around me, sitting by the fire and watching the snow drift down from the sky. So, while my sister was out playing in the snow and making a fantastic looking snowman, I was making these Maple Swirl Biscuits.

I realized the other day that I make way too many recipes from the internet and not enough from my magazines and cookbooks; I think they feel neglected. In order for my books and magazines to feel more loved, I will be baking from them more often. These biscuits came from Better Homes and Gardens Fall Baking 2011 magazine. I have bookmarked so many recipes in this thing, it’s ridiculous. These biscuits don’t have any wacky ingredients so you don’t have to run to the store in the freezing cold snow to get something you might use once.

The dough is similar to the Grape Jelly Roly-Poly I made back in mid-summer. It’s so flaky and crumbly in the best of ways and the filling is so delicious; it’s like a biscuit version of a cinnamon roll. I halved the recipe and I still ended up with 12 biscuits, but I guess that means I can have two instead of one, right?

Maple Swirl Biscuits
adapted from BHG Fall Baking 2011 Magazine

Ingredients
1 ½ cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ stick (4 tbsp) unsalted butter, cold
½ cup milk
2 tbsp pure maple syrup
¼ cup brown sugar
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
½ cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp pure maple syrup
2 tsp milk

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Using a pastry cutter (or a fork), cut the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Make a well into the center of the flour and butter mixture and pour the milk and maple syrup in all at once. Stir the wet and dry ingredients together until it forms a rough-looking ball.
3. Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead about 10-12 times. Roll dough into an approximate 10x6 inch rectangle. Brush on the melted butter and then press the brown sugar on top, making sure to cover all of the melted butter spots. Starting from the long side, roll the dough into a spiral and pinch the seam to seal. Using a sharp knife, cut the dough into about 1 ½ inch slices. Arrange the biscuits onto the prepared baking sheet facing upwards. Gently press down on the dough. If you have left over melted butter, use it to brush the tops of the biscuits, if you don’t melt some butter and brush the tops of the biscuits.
4. Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Once the biscuits are done baking, remove onto a cooling rack. While you wait for the biscuits to cool, make the glaze. To make the glaze, put the powdered sugar, maple syrup, and milk into a small bowl and whisk. You may wish to add more or less milk depending on how thick you want your glaze. Once the biscuits have cooled down slightly, drizzle the tops with the maple glaze.

My, My, Oatmeal Pie

I love oatmeal. It is probably the most delicious thing on the planet. I believe I have Quaker Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal at least five out of the seven days of the week. My hands are always cold and in the morning it’s nice to just hold that nice warm bowl of hot oatmeal and then slowly eat it, which in turn makes my body feel all cozy. Now, I love oatmeal in many forms: as breakfast, as dinner, sometimes lunch, streusel, especially as a cookie, but what about pie?

The idea came to me in the beginning of the week as I was having my daily bowl of oatmeal. I am not your typical fruit pie find of gal, in fact, I hate chunks (well fruit chunks that it) and I just don’t like fruit either, so I like the idea of cream pies, pumpkin pies, cinnamon pies, etc. Oatmeal is very versatile, I think, and so I Googled oatmeal pie and low and behold, I found a few recipes for oatmeal pie. However, some I just didn’t get the right feeling about and usually when I find a recipe I like, I favorite it and then go searching, only to come back to the first one I liked. That’s why I stuck with this recipe for Maple Oatmeal Pie.

I liked the ingredients, but it lacked directions and I’m one of those people that need everything written out for them step by step (yay visual learners!). So I kinda of had to improvise with the directions, but this recipe also called for a heck of a lot of honey, and not a whole bunch of maple and I’ll choose maple over honey any day, so I decreased the amount of honey and increased the amount of maple syrup. I also had to decrease the amount of butter by a tablespoon, because I was short on it. Now, this pie GREW! I was expecting it to just kinda sit there with about an inch of crust peaking out, but noooo. This thing grew as if I had put some kind of extra strength leavening in it.

I planned on having this pie for lunch, but as it was cooking, the minutes were going by and I was getting so hungry, that I decided to eat some lunch and instead of having a few granola bars to compliment my usual sandwich, I would have the pie. This was a pretty good pie, I must admit. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t not make some changes. First change, is add some more flavor to the crust. I wonder if it’s ok to add some vanilla to crust to make it taste better. Second thing is, I think I would use quick cooking oats instead of old fashioned oats, it might make the pie a little more tender. Third, not that the honey didn’t add a nice touch, it did, but maybe I would switch out the honey with some brown sugar, you can’t go wrong with brown sugar!

Below you will also find the recipe I used for the crust, but you can buy store bought crust. I was just getting frustrated because pie crusts don't come in single packages, but the 2 pie crust package. Stupid :P

At this point, I was thinking that maybe I needed more oats because there were some problems with the liquid to oat ratio.

However, it turned out just fine and looked lovely. Even my sister said she might think about maybe trying it, and she hates pie.

 

Yummy yummy pie.

Maple Oatmeal Pie
slightly adapted from A Cozy Kitchen
serves 8

Ingredients
1 unbaked pie shell
3 tbsp butter
½ cup honey
1/3 cup pure maple syrup
2 eggs
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
1 cup uncooked oats

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line pie pan with uncooked pie crust and set aside
2. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter. Slowly add in the honey and then the maple syrup until well incorporated. Add in the eggs one at a time, making sure that one is fulled mixed in before adding the second. Add the cinnamon, vanilla, salt and stir in the oats.
3. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes so the oats have a chance to absorb the liquid mixture. In the mean time, if you are obsessed with having the kitchen clean like I am, you can take advantage of this and clean up the mess.
4. Pour into pie plate and bake in the oven for 40-50 minutes or until the pie is set.
5. Cool on a wire rack for 10-20 minutes and once it's cool, you can cut into the pie and serve.

Pie Crust
halved from Land O Lakes
makes 1 9 inch pie crust

Ingredients
1 cup flour
1/8 tsp salt
5 tbsp unsalted butter
4-5 tbsp cold water

Directions

1. Combine the flour and salt. Cut out small chunks of butter into the flour and, using your hands (or food processor) mix in the butter until the flour looks like coarse crumbs. Add in the water by tablespoons until the dough forms a nice bowl.
2. No need to refrigerate this dough, it works better if it is slightly cold, but not far off from room temp. Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out into a 12 inch circle. I can never get it looking right, or have the correct size, so I just roll until it can't be rolled no more.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 1/8 pie
Calories 299.1 Total Fat 13.0 g Saturated Fat 0.5 g Polyunsaturated Fat 0.5 g Monounsaturated Fat 0.8 g Cholesterol 76.3 mg Sodium 135.5 mg Potassium 38.6 mg Total Carbohydrate 34.9 g 1.6 g Sugars 25.5 g Protein 13.3 g

Christmas Morning Maple Muffins - and a long story

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, I did! :D I even got two pie plates from my mom and I’ve already decided what pie I’m going to make, so stay tuned for that in the weeks to come.

So I got the notion in my head that I would make everyone a Christmas breakfast for when we were done opening presents and the decision came down to two things: Maple Oat Muffins and Cinnamon Rolls, and as you can see from the title of this blog I chose the muffins, but here’s why. I took a poll in my family on who wanted what; I wanted the muffins, my dad wanted both and my mom and sister wanted the cinnamon rolls so I decided to make the cinnamon rolls for breakfast, BUT I would make the maple oat muffins for the Christmas lunch because I love to get things my way sometimes. :) Well I got up at 6am and got all of the ingredients together and read the directions carefully and adaptations because I didn’t have a bread maker I had to improvise off of other’s comments. By around 6:30 I got started, making sure not to wake anyone. Right off the bat I knew something was wrong because the yeast wasn’t dissolving, but I continued on anyways. After 45 minutes of waiting the dough never rose and I got impatient and my dad was up and it was only a matter of time before my mom and sister, Emily would be too. I got out the ingredients for the maple oat muffins and got to work. Needless to say they were ready by the time our presents were opened and we were all ready for breakfast. These were the most amazing things ever. I wish I could taste a little more of the maple flavor but in the end I loved them! I had two for breakfast and I think Emily had about 5, haha. I will definitely be making these again soon!

These muffins went so quickly! I was amazed since nothing

 goes that quickly.

 Mom gave me the idea to put a bow in them, as if they were

Christmas presents. :)

 These were the Cinnamon Rolls i tried to make. It took 2 hours for the

dough to get 1/4 bigger and then another hour after they

were cut to hardly rise at all...

They werent even that good, maybe about a C. Maybe I'll try the

recipe again...but not anytime soon.

Mape Oat Muffins

slightly adapted from recipe.com

makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

1 cup quick-cooking or regular rolled oats

1/2 cup milk

1 cup all-purpose flour (used unbleached)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup chopped pecans (omtied)

Directions

1. Grease twelve 2-1/2-inch muffin cups or line with paper bake cups; set aside. In a medium bowl, combine oats and milk; let stand for 5 minutes. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Make a well in center of flour mixture; set aside.
2. Stir maple syrup, melted butter and egg into oats mixture. Add egg mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened (batter should be lumpy). Fold half of the pecans into the batter.
3. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each two-thirds full. Sprinkle with remaining nuts. Bake in a 400 degree F oven for 15 to 18 minutes or until tops are golden and a wooden toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool in muffin cups on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove from muffin cups; serve warm. Makes 12 muffins.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 1 muffin
with/without pecans: Calories 154.4 120.2 Total Fat 4.7 g 1.1 g Saturated Fat 0.6 g 0.3 g Polyunsaturated Fat 1.3 g 0.2 g Monounsaturated Fat 2.4 g 0.4 g Cholesterol 18.5 mg 18.5 mg Sodium 140.4 mg 140.4 mg Potassium 39.1 mg 18.8 mg Total Carbohydrate 26.5 g 25.9 mg Dietary Fiber 1.5 g 1.0 g Sugars 14.4 g 14.2 g Protein 9.1 g 8.7 g