Pumpkin Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for my pumpkin carving party tomorrow. (Or maybe I am having the pumpkin carving party so I have a good excuse to make pumpkin cupcakes?) Either way, I am so happy with the way they turned out.

I have never put a huge emphasis on how my cupcakes taste before. They usually just taste like cupcakes. But this time, I made "pumpkin spice" cupcakes with real pumpkin and, you guessed it, pumpkin spice. I LOVE the way these taste! I think they are my favorite tasting cupcakes of all time.

I first saw the idea for this design in my Hello, Cupcake book that I'm obsessed with, and then I saw the same cupcakes on the cover of Family Circle magazine, only they used pretzels instead of green Twizzlers for the stems. I like the Hello, Cupcake ones better, but I did end up buying the magazine and getting this great recipe for a pumpkin pie. I made the first half of it tonight, so I'll put up a blog tomorrow when it's done and I have some pictures.

These cupcakes were the easiest so far to make. You just put on the frosting, roll it around in some orange sugar, make some indentions with a toothpick, pipe some lines in the indentation and stick on your stem. If I could go back and change one thing, I would have made less cupcakes with the batter and filled the cups closer to the top to get more of a rounded shape. I did my best to make it rounded with the frosting, but it's not quite the same.