Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes

Bake sale recipe #3! More pumpkin....

This was a brand new one for me. I don't usually buy cake mixes in a box so I didn't know much about the FUN da-Middles product, which turned out to be the main ingredient in this recipe. But anything with "pumpkin" in the title always immediately intrigues me. When I was introduced to the website Tablespoon.com, the first recipe that caught my attention was one for Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes. Did that just say "pumpkin pie" and "cupcake" in the same sentence? Yes, please!

The neat thing about FUN da-Middles compared to other cupcake mixes is that they come with a packet of cream filling that you can bake right into the center of each cupcake. The neat thing about the Pumpkin Pie Cupcake recipe I followed for my final bake sale item was that you could make that filling taste like autumn with a little maple syrup in the center of the cream.

This recipe I pretty much followed exactly according to smwise--another blogger named Stephanie who originally posted the Pumpkin Pie Cupcake recipe. You can check out her awesome directions and photos here, but I'll still re-post the recipe below!

Ingredients:

1 box Fun da-Middles yellow cupcake mix with creamy vanilla filling
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
2 eggs
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
maple syrup

Directions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a cupcake tin with paper liners. Then beat together the cupcake mix, water, pumpkin, eggs and pumpkin pie spice. (It's recommended to use an electric mixer on a low speed for 30 seconds and then a medium speed for 2 minutes, but I just used a fork and my arm muscles to power through as I counted in my head).

2.) Fill each cup in the tin about 1/3 of the way up. Knead the filling packet 20 times to mix it up, cut the corner off, and then squeeze the filling into the center of each cup, dividing it equally until it's all gone. Add a couple drops of maple syrup to the center of each filling, then scoop the rest of the batter on top of the cups until all are filled to the top and the cream is completely covered.

3.) Stephanie (smwise) recommends topping the cupcakes with pecans (which I love), but I was in a hurry to get these done before the bake sale, so you can always skip that step, especially if you plan to frost the cupcakes after they've cooled. Bake approximately 24-29 minutes, then cool 20 minutes before removing the cupcakes from the tin. Frost or drizzle with more maple syrup if you desire.

Unfortunately I didn't get to taste test these because I can't eat the cream filling, and they disappeared before I had a chance to find out if anyone liked them. I'm assuming their disappearance is a good sign....

That's it for my bake sale recipes! (I figured there was no need to write about my bake sale caramel apples since I covered that recipe in a previous September blog post, here). Even more pumpkin goodness to come soon! Because I just can't get enough of the stuff....