halloween cupcakes | insimoneskitchen.com

You see… here is the thing… I am not a big fan of cake decorating. I just can’t do it. I don’t have the patience and after three atempts of making a pumpkin I am ready to toss a block of orange marzipan to the wall. And that makes no one happy as you’ll have a big orange spot on your wall.Β  And than you need paint and all and well, you know where this is going… I can look with endless admiration at people who make works of art out of cake and I have been photographing those works of art for five years but there is a good reason I am making the pictures and not the cakes.

What a hassle… Ofcourse baking the cupcakes was the easy part. Although these are quite special, even though you won’t be able to tell from the pics. Which is a shame really… These are pumpking spiced cupcakes with cranberries and even without all the halloween stuff they are deliciously delicious. But I went to the local cake decoration shop that same morning in Almere Haven and got some Halloween things and I had a clear picture in my head of how it was supposed to come out.

Halloween cupcakes | insimoneskitchen.com

Cupcakes with a grave tomb was the idea and a cute orange pumpkin to go along with it and I wanted to make a variant where you had this mountain of buttercreme with small spiders crawling down the sides. Sounds good right? Well, needless to say those spiders never came. “You can make those easily with black marzipan'” the cake decorating lady told me in the store. Uhu.. It is me… The clumsy one.. I thought at that moment however that it would all work out because how hard could it be right?

Halloween cupcakes | insimoneskitchen.com

Well…. as you can see making a round pumpkin was already a challenge. Looks more like a failed attempt at making a football with a green head. But you saw right away that it was supposed to be a pumpkin right? Who is the same size as the gravestone.. Did you see it was a gravestone? I guess if I hadn’t put RIP on it you would probably still be searching for that tomb. O well, I guess I have other qualities… Lol..

Halloween cupcakes | insimoneskitchen.com

The reason for all those mucking about was of course the fact that i wanted to make at least one Halloween related post before my holiday. Because how else would you cope right? Hahaha… Sorry, too much marzipan… So estetically they are not as pleasing as I had wanted them to be but they are super delicious. So if you want to make something else from the standard boring cupcake than I can highly recommend this recipe. I used the recipe for the buttercream from the blog of Laura’s Bakery, who is many, many times better in baking complicated thing. That is clear if you check her blog (in Dutch) But for Halloween is a nice treat I think and if you’re better in decorating it will be a winner!

Halloween cupcakes with spices and pumpkin | insimoneskitchen.com

halloween cupcakes | insimonesk.wpengine.com

Halloween pumpkin cupcakes with spices

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Prep time 10 minutes
Cooking time 25 minutes
Total time 35 minutes

12

Ingredients

For theΒ  cupcakes:

  • 175 ml sunflower oil
  • 175 gr light brown sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 200 gr roasted pumpkin puree see note
  • 125 gr cranberries
  • zest of 1 orange
  • 2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp cardemom
  • 1 tsp anisseeds
  • 1/2 tsp ground cloves
  • 150 gr selfraising flour
  • 50 gr chestnut flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • For the buttercream
  • 45 gr flour
  • 240 ml milk
  • 200 gr butter unsalted at roomtemperature
  • 200 gr icing sugar
  • 5 ml vanilla extract

  • Preheat the oven to 180 C and line a muffin tin with the muffin papers of your choice. Pour the oil into a large bowl and add the sugar, eggs and vanilla to it. Whisk this well, add the pureed pumpkin, cranberries and orangezest.
  • Stir the cinnamon, cardamom, anisseeds, flour (both types. sieve this before doing that as the chestnut flour tends to have little lumps in it) and baking soda. Mix it and than scoop into your muffin tins. Don't fill all the way to the edge but leave a little space for it to rise.
  • Bake the cupcakes in about 25 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean when you stick it in the middle. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely while you make your butter creme.
  • Vanill botercream
  • Sift the flour and put this together with the milk in a small saucepan. Stir everything well until it is smooth. Put your saucepan on the heat and keep stirring. It will thicken quickly but keep stirring for about a minute or five. Once it cooks you turn the heat down. It should be ready when a small skewer will stay upright in the mixture. Than you know it is good to go.
  • Put into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Leave to cool to roomtemperature.
  • In the meantime whisk the butter in another bowl until fluffy. Add the icing sugar (be careful as it will dust the whole kitchen!) and the vanilla extract and mix everything well together.
  • As soon as your mixture is cooled off add it to the butter. Mix it well for another five minutes and put the bowl back in the fridge for half an hour. After that it will be ready to be piped.

Disclaimer

The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.

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Simone van den Berg

Food blogger from the Netherlands. Loves good food. Likes to create healthy and easy recipes for daily use, but also loves the occasional sweet dish. Lives in the Netherlands with her two cats; Humphrey and Buffy. Profession: Food photographer, food blogger, recipe developer and nutritionist