Pumpkin Iced Vanilla Cupcakes

Fall is a perfect season for cupcakes.  Actually, I think every season is a good season for cupcakes but Fall is a great season for decorating them.  With Halloween, the ideas are endless and there are always opportunities to make cupcakes to share. This pumpkin iced cupcake for Fall doesn't require much extra effort to make an extremely cute seasonal treat.

Pumpkin Iced Vanilla Cupcakes
 
Begin with your cupcake.  You can fix your cupcake from scratch with this recipe or make it from a box. As long as you have a foundation to work with, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

You'll also need some frosting. I suppose you can use a canned frosting but it's nice to have homemade because you can make it the consistency and flavor that you want.  Here's my favorite buttercream recipe.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
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4 ½ cups powdered sugar

½ cup stick butter, softened

1 ½ tsp vanilla

2-3 Tbsp milk

Food coloring gel, orange

In a medium bowl, mix the sugar and butter then stir in the vanilla and add milk until it's smooth and at the consistency you are looking for.   

Add food coloring gel until completely mixed and the color is right.  

For the pumpkin cupcakes, you will need two different colors.  Set aside about ½ cup of white frosting before creating the orange.  With the icing you set aside, you can add green food coloring gel to have a small bag of green frosting.

Pumpkin Decorated Cupcakes

Printable version

Ingredients

vanilla buttercream - colored orange

vanilla buttercream - colored green

orange sugar sprinkles

Kit Kat minis

1.  After you create your orange frosting (I had to use "golden yellow" and "red" to make mine since I didn't have orange gel), you can begin creating your pumpkin cupcakes.  Use a piping bag without a tip to get a smooth frosted top for your cupcake.

2.  Pour the orange sugar sprinkles in a bowl wide enough to hold the cupcake.  With a smooth frosted top, turn the cupcake upside down and roll the iced top in the sprinkles.  Roll the sides first then roll the top of the cupcake to smooth it out.

3.  Once your cupcakes are frosted and sugared, place a mini Kit Kat in the middle of the cake, standing up like a stem.

4.  To add more color to your pumpkin, you can also add a leaf or two to the edge of the Kit Kat.  There are special tips for making leaves but I just used a Ziplock bag.  

Add your green frosting to the bag and cut the corner at a bit of an angle, with the seam of the bag facing up.  This seam, along with the angle, will help make the "leaf" come out with a line on it. 

If this seems too complicated, you can also just cut a small tip off the bag to make a squiggly vine around the Kit Kat stem.

5.  Now that you have leaves or vines, you've got yourself a pumpkin cupcake!  Looks adorable and is delicious too!