Still pregnant. For all of those random strangers who said I was going to deliver early, I scoff in your general direction. None of you sweet blog readers, it was those strangers on the street that gave me the ‘Oh my GOD! How far along are you? Oh honey, you are never going to make it! Shirley, come look at this!’ On one outing alone that happened to me FIVE times. FIVE. Good for the self-confidence.
We haven’t been doing much to write home about. Just waiting. Doing some laundry. Watching the rain. Baking. Oogling over all of the fall catalogs arriving in the mail. Each one of us picking out our wish list. Loving all of the new shows. And avoiding the acorns as they come plummeting from the sky. Seriously, our oak trees have never produced acorns, but something about the weather lately has them falling from the trees. The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Last night I got a hankering for some pumpkin cupcakes. Oh. My. Godness. They seriously make the house smell better than any pumpkin candle could ever try to do. Seriously. And they have to be the best cupcakes I have ever eaten. I know I have mentioned the ‘trailer food’ around Austin and how phenomenal it is. Well, apparently this sweet gal opened yet another cupcake trailer called Sugarstar Cupcakes and shared her recipe for pumpkin cupcakes with the world. So I will share it with you.
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Linus’ Pumpkin Cupcakes
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 package instant butterscotch pudding mix
- 2 t. baking soda
- 1/4 t. salt
- 1 T. ground cinnamon
- 1/2 t. ground ginger
- 1/2 t. ground allspice
- 1/4 t. ground cloves
- 1/3 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger (i left out because i couldn’t find it)
- 1 cup butter, room temp.
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 4 eggs, room temperature
- 1 t. vanilla extract
- 1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin purée
For cream cheese frosting
- 4 oz. cream cheese
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 t. vanilla
- 1 t. cinnamon
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Grease 24 muffin cups, or line with paper muffin liners. Whisk together the flour, pudding mix, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ground ginger, allspice, cloves, and crystallized ginger in a bowl; set aside.
Beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. The mixture should be noticeably lighter in color. Add the room-temperature eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to blend into the butter mixture before adding the next. Beat in the vanilla extract and pumpkin purée with the last egg. Stir in the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared muffin cups.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden and the tops and spring back when lightly pressed, about 20 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.
For icing, combine all ingredients and spread frosting on top of the cupcakes. Makes 24 cupcakes.
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I hope you all have a nice relaxing fall weekend. We’ll be going to soccer games and car shopping for a bigger vehicle. And unless I happen to go into labor this weekend we’ll have a sweet baby on Tuesday. Oh. My. Goodness.
