White Chocolate & Pumpkin Cupcakes with White Chocolate Frosting

If you've read any of my other posts, you might know that I'm not a big fan of white chocolate.  I don't like white chocolate candy bars, nor do I like anything dipped in white chocolate.  I am, however, a huge fan of white chocolate chips baked in almost anything.  My favorite cookie is white chocolate with macadamia nuts.  Something about the buttery cookie mixed with the white chocolate is so good.

That said, these are not cookies but they're still so yummy!  I used my pumpkin cupcake recipe, added a few white chocolate chips, and topped with a delicious (and not too sweet) white chocolate buttercream frosting.  Even my husband who never eats all of his frosting thought this frosting was yum!


White Chocolate & Pumpkin Cupcakes with White Chocolate Frosting

Printable version
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Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin puree, not pie filling
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
½ cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup white chocolate chips
White Chocolate buttercream frosting (see below)

1.  Preheat oven to 350˚.  Line muffin tin with cupcake liners (12).
2.  In a medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. In a larger bowl or mixer, combine the eggs, pumpkin, granulated sugar,brown sugar, and vegetable oil and whisk together.  Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until combine.
3. Fold the white chocolate chips into the batter.
4.  Divide the batter into the cupcake liners.  Fill about 2/3 full.
5.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cupcake springs back to the touch.  Allow cupcakes to cool completely before frosting.
6.  Using a piping bag and a tip (I use Wilton 1M Star tip),frost the tops of the cupcakes with white chocolate frosting.  Top with chopped pecans and a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice. 

White Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup white chocolate chips, melted and cooled
2-3 Tbsp milk 

In your mixing bowl, slowly mix together the butter, sugar, vanilla extract, and melted white chocolate.  Gradually add milk until frosting is at the consistency you want.

Serves 12

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
Printable version

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!