These pumpkin cupcakes are so yummy and really moist.  There are just a few ingredients in this recipe and there are no eggs or oil in them.  The pumpkin buttercream frosting is delicous.  I could eat it by the spoonful!   Here are the recipes if you’d like to try a nice Halloween treat.

Pumpkin Cupcakes

1 Box Duncan Hines White Cake Mix

1 Cup Canned Pumpkin

2 Tsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice

1 Cup Applesauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour white cake mix into a bowl. Add canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice and applesauce. Mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 of the way full with mix. If you aren’t using cupcake liners, make sure you spray your cupcake pan with a non-stick baking spray. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cupcake comes out clean. Let cool thoroughly before adding frosting.   These are delicious enough to eat without  any frosting.  Enjoy!

Pumpkin Buttercream Frosting

1/3 Cup Solid Vegetable Shortening
1/3 Cup Butter
1/2 Cup Canned Pumpkin
… 1 Tsp. Pure Vanilla Extract
2 Tsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice
4 Cups Confectioner’s Sugar

Cream shortening and butter with mixer. Add canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice and vanilla. Add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl each time before adding more sugar. Beat on medium speed until fluffy. I cut back the canned pumpkin to 1/2 cup in this recipe. I used 1 cup in mine and it was way too runny. If  it needs to thicken up a bit you could add more sugar to it. This frosting is really good if you need a pumpkin fix!

Thanks for reading!

I am so grateful to have been given another blog award by a fellow blogger.  This one is called the Liebster Blog Award.  In German, Liebster means Beloved, Dear, Dearest and it is so very special to me.  Thank so much to Nel from The PaperCup Kitchen.  You are so sweet to extend this award to me and my blog.  I am very thankful for your support and to everyone else reading!

In return, I am passing along this award to 5 other pages that I have enjoyed reading lately. 

The Hungry Mommy

Blog of a Peri-Menopausal Woman……. When I Remember

 The Dash Between

Kesha’s Kitchen Kreations

Love.Peace.Happiness.Cooking

It was so hard to choose just 5, but I have enjoyed reading these wonderful blogs.

Thank you again, Dear Nel! 

Not too long ago, I tried my first Whoopie Pie.  They were chocolate pies with a peanut butter cream in the middle and they were really good.  I’ve been wanting to try to make some ever since.  A shopping trip to Wilmington led me to Williams Sonoma.  When I walked in the store,  the smell of freshly baked pumpkin bread hit me.  It always smells so good in their store, no doubt this is how they get people in a cooking mood and a shopping mood, too.  I spied the Pumpkin Whoopie Pie mix and the pans to make them in and had to have one of each.  Any excuse to add to my collection of baking pans! 

Seeing as how all I had to do was empty a pouch into my Kitchen-Aid mixer, along with a few other ingredients, it seemed like it would be pretty simple, and for the most part, it was.  Have I ever mentioned how much I love my Kitchen-Aid mixer?  I have no idea what I did before I got one.  It is absolutely my favorite thing in my kitchen.  You know, some attachments for Christmas would be a wonderful gift.  Could you all pass that along to Santa?  Maybe I can leave him Whoopie Pies instead of cookies this year. 🙂 

Everything went in to the mixer with  no problem.  I sprayed the Whoopie Pie pan with non-stick cooking spray like the directions called for.  The box said to put 2 TBS of mix into each well.  I can tell you, either I don’t know how to measure out 2 TBS or this was way too much to put in them.  The mix was VERY thick so I may have erred when measuring this out.  Yes, I have to tell you the bad right along with the good, no matter how much I don’t want to.   After all the wells had been filled, I had no mix left.  This is the part where it would have helped if I had read the ENTIRE set of instructions before I just jumped in.  I needed the batter to fill the pan twice and here I had only filled it once!   The pie pan came with a recipe for original Whoopie Pies and that one calls for 1 1/2 TBS of mix in each well so I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t entirely my fault.  Next time, I think I’ll just try 1 TBS of mix in each well.  Gotta love trial and error.  

These were supposed to cook for 10 minutes, but seeing as how they were twice as full as what the directions called for, I let them cook about 15 minutes.  The lightbulb came on here and I figured I could just cut them in half!  Who would know?  I’d still have tops and bottoms and cream in the middle!

You probably can’t tell much by this picture, but my tops and my bottoms were going to be different sizes.  I was going to have to make lop-sided whoopie pies folks!  These were more muffin shaped than whoopie pie shaped.  Then that light bulb came on again…I could cut these in half, length wise and use two tops for half of them and two bottoms for the other half.  Am I a genius, or what?  Don’t answer that!  It was a pretty good cover up in my mind!

You can see how they turned out here.  I don’t think they look too bad and they tasted delicious!  See my new Snowman plate I got during my shopping trip?  It’s almost that time again and I can’t wait!!  Please, don’t forget to tell Santa about those attachments for my Kitchen-Aid!  As always, thanks for reading!!