Pumpkin Chai Cupcakes

Today I have a recipe for some cute and delicious fall cupcakes. I decorated mine Halloween style, because I couldn’t resist (if you haven’t caught on yet, I love Halloween!!) The cupcakes are vanilla chai (they really taste just like a chai tea latte!) and they have a pumpkin cream cheese frosting.

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and spices.
3. Fold in buttermilk and flour in parts, alternating until both have been added completely (I added mine in three parts) Be careful not to over mix.
4. Mix together the baking soda and apple cider vinegar, then stir gently into the batter.
5. Divide evenly into a prepared muffin pan – each cup should be about 3/4 full.
6. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean.
7. Remove from pan and allow to cool completely before frosting.

Ingredients

• 1 1/3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 6 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature
• approximately 1/3 cup pumpkin purée (not pie filling)

Directions:

1. Place the sugar and cinnamon in a medium bowl and whisk to combine; set aside.
2. Beat cream cheese and butter with stand mixer (or hand mixer, or a magic bullet blender, which is what I have, works pretty well too)
3. Add powdered sugar mixture and beat until smooth, then add pumpkin.
4. If you want to pipe the frosting on, I recommend refrigerating it so it hardens up a bit, otherwise just slather it on your cooled cupcakes and enjoy!

Decorations

I decorated my cupcakes with piped orange frosting and chocolate sprinkles. Of course, the pumpkin in the frosting gives it a nice orange color to begin with – I wanted my orange to be a little deeper, so I added 2 drops of red food coloring and 4 drops of yellow food coloring. After refrigerating the frosting overnight, I put it in a plastic ziploc bag, snipped one of the corners off and used that to pipe the frosting in a swirl pattern on top (just start at the outside and swirl your way inward, like you would if you were filling a cone with soft serve ice cream). Then I shook some chocolate sprinkles on. I think these would also look really cute with plastic pumpkin cupcake toppers, like these or these. You could also go with orange sprinkles, or black or orange edible glitter.

I hope you have fun making and decorating your cupcakes, and let me know what you think of the recipe! xx

ps: I took way too many pictures of these cupcakes, because I thought they were so cute, and also because I had fun props to use, like a pumpkin and some squash, so here’s one more for you ;)