Yummy cakes.....

This is the recipe for pumpkin cupcakes that Neviepie-Cakes made with her kids to get rid of their pumpkin scrappings. Her girls rejected the pumpkin soup as did Mr Neviepie-Cakes (aka Mr Lemon Drizzle), and Natasha said, "I didn't even dare mention a stew so I thought I'd better go for the sweet option!
We made spiced pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting." Over to Natasha to tell us how......

INGREDIENTS

125g butter

125g sugar

2 large eggs

grated orange peel and juice

125g self raising flour

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

200g pumpkin flesh

milk

Preheat oven to 200 or 175 for fan oven.

Line cupcake tray with inserts.

Beat together butter and sugar for about two minutes until pale and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, add the grated orange peel. Sift together the flour and spices and add to the mixture. Fold gently together. Then fold in the pumkin and orange juice. The cake mixture should have a soft consistency and drop easily off a spoon.

Using a dessert spoon distribute the mixture evenly into the cupcake cases.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until pale golden

We used the scrapings from our pumpkin heads so I used my fabulous Pampered Chef chopper to chop up the flesh. If you are not creating a spooky masterpiece and just fancy some pumpkin cupcakes you could just grate it.

Ready to go into the oven!

And just out, filling the house with the smell of pumpkiny goodness.

FROSTING

250g unsalted butter

250g icing sugar

100g cream cheese

1 teaspoon of lemon juice.

Beat all the ingredients together until light and fluffly.

Put a heaped teaspoon of the frosting on the top of each cake and with an

offset spatula (or back of a knife) level it off.

I decorated ours with gingerbread leaves and gold fondant leaves to make them really autumnal.

As I mentioned earlier I did make these with the kidlets. However I have attempted to spare you the horror of all this entails in my pictures, ( half an hours making for two hours clearing up!) but I couldn't resist showing off my three year olds effort. Not bad hey?