Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

For me, October is the beginning of a baking season filled with pumpkin and spices--a season that lasts through the end of November and culminates, of course, in Thanksgiving. Once December rolls around, I'm more focused on peppermint and chocolate and Christmas candies. But for these two months of fall baking, pumpkin is the leading flavor. These pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes combine the flavor of pumpkin pie but also feature dark chocolate chips and smooth cream cheese frosting, The combination is fantastic--if you're skeptical about pumpkin and chocolate together, don't be!
I decorated my cupcakes with bright orange sprinkles, but you could top these cupcakes with candy corn, candy pumpkins, candied pecans, more chocolate chips, or any number of festive toppings.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Yield: 32 cupcakes

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

2 cups brown sugar

4 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1 ½ cups canned pumpkin

4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon cloves or allspice

2 cups dark chocolate chips

Directions:

1.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard size muffin tin with cupcake liners. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices.

2.       Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, until incorporated.

3.       Add 1/3 of the flour mixture, beating on low until combined, then add half of the buttermilk. Add the next 1/3 of the flour mixture, then the rest of the buttermilk, then the remaining flour mixture, mixing after each addition.

4.       Add the pumpkin and mix until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

5.       Pour batter into the paper liners (filling about ¾ full) and bake for 15-20 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

2 sticks butter

1 (8 ounce) package of cream cheese

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

1.       Using an electric mixer, beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy.  Beat in vanilla extract.

2.       Add powdered sugar, ½ cup at a time, beating after each addition until smooth, until frosting reaches the desired consistency.

Sea Salt Caramels with Vanilla Bean

This was my first attempt at making homemade caramels, and I have to say, this recipe is a good one to start out with. It has a rich, buttery caramel flavor but the flecks of vanilla bean and sea salt really enhance the taste. This recipe was also my first experience with real vanilla beans, which have to be split open and scraped out into the mixture. My caramels turned out a little on the soft side (which is evident in the picture), because I was a bit timid about about overcooking the caramel mixture. Next time, I'll go a couple degrees hotter and see if I get more of a chewy consistency. The recipe specifies 248 degrees as the temperature to reach, and I think I may have stopped a couple degrees shy of this. The softer caramels kind of grew on me though--they would have made a good coating for caramel apples.

Tips for making caramel: when the recipe says do not stir, definitely do not stir. Instead, swirl the mixture frequently in the pan. If you stir the mixture at this stage, you can end up with a grainy texture rather than a smooth candy. Also, when you pour the caramel into the pan to cool, don't scrape the sides or bottom of the pan, because the caramel you scrape out will have a crumbly, sugary texture. Once you cut the caramels into squares, you'll have to wrap each square in wax paper, which can be a little time-consuming. Save yourself some assembly time by cutting out 64 pieces of wax paper while you wait for the caramels to cool so you have the wrappers ready to go. It's possible you can buy candy wrappers for this sort of thing, but wax paper works well.

Sea Salt Caramels with Vanilla Bean

1 cup heavy cream 

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces 

1/2 tsp vanilla 

1 vanilla bean pod, split and scraped 

1 1/4 teaspoon sea salt, plus more for sprinkling 

1/4 cup water 

1 1/2 cups sugar 

1/4 cup light corn syrup

Directions:

1. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, then lightly butter the parchment and sides of the pan.
2. Place the cream, butter, vanilla, and sea salt in a small saucepan. Split open the vanilla bean and scrape the insides into the cream mixture. Add the vanilla bean pod to the mixture as well. Bring the mixture to a boil, remove from heat and set aside.
3. Boil sugar, corn syrup, and water in a heavy saucepan, stirring only until sugar is dissolved. Stop stirring the mixture. Boil, without stirring but gently swirling pan, until mixture is a light golden caramel.
4. Remove the vanilla bean pod from the cream mixture and carefully stir the cream mixture into the caramel (mixture will bubble up) and simmer, stirring frequently, until caramel registers 248 on thermometer. This will take a while--check the temperature frequently using a candy thermometer. 
5. Pour the caramel into the baking pan and cool for 30 minutes. Sprinkle another pinch or two of sea salt over the top of the caramel. Let sit until completely cooled. Cut into 1-inch pieces, and then wrap each piece in a 4-inch square of wax paper, twisting the ends to close.

Recipe adapted from Confections of a Foodie Bride

Monster Cookies

I'm not really sure why these cookies are called "monster cookies," but I think it probably has to do with the variety of ingredients they're filled with--peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chips, and m & m candies. That and the recipe makes an enormous batch. The unique thing about these cookies is that they don't use flour but use quick oats instead. They're still soft on the inside and very moist! You can make these into giant cookies and still serve a large group.

Monster Cookies

1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks)
2 cups white sugar
2 cups brown sugar
3 cups peanut butter
6 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons corn syrup
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 teaspoons baking soda
9 cups quick oats
2 cups chocolate chips
2 cups m & m candies

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place eggs in a bowl of warm water to bring them to room temperature.
2. Cream butter and sugars together. Beat in peanut butter.
3. Beat in eggs two at a time until incorporated. Stir in corn syrup and vanilla extract.
4. Mix in baking soda and quick oats until incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips and m & m candies with a wooden spoon.
5. Drop by tablespoons onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake 12-14 minutes or until cookies begin to brown around the edges (the centers will still be soft). Cool on the cookie sheet for 2-3 minutes and then remove to wire racks to cool.

Raspberry Cheesecake Cookies

I'm not one for buying cookies (ok, mint oreos excepted), given how much I like to make them, but this spring I bought a cookie at Subway just because of its unusual and tempting flavor-- raspberry cheesecake. Cheesecake in a cookie?! It was delicious but, sadly, a seasonal item. So I set out to make them myself, but I had to make a few modifications. Using cream cheese in a cookie produces a cake-like consistency, and I definitely like my cookies chewy rather than cakey. To get the cheesecake flavor without using actual cream cheese, these cookies use cheesecake flavored pudding mix. These cookies also use real raspberries, rather than raspberry jam bits (which is what Subway's appeared to use). The downside to real raspberries is that they're inevitably going to streak the dough a bit, even given the most careful mixing, but the taste of real raspberries is probably worth the occasional blue-tinged cookie.

White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake Cookies

½ cup butter (1 stick), softened

½ cup shortening

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 ¼ cups flour

1 package Jello cheesecake pudding mix

1 ½ cups white chocolate chips

1 cup frozen raspberries

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cream butter, shortening, and sugars until fluffy.

2. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well.  In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and pudding mix.  Add dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and mix until incorporated.

3. Place raspberries in a food processor and pulse until chopped. Stir the raspberries and white chocolate chips into the cookie dough with a wooden spoon.

4. Drop dough by tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are set. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes and then remove to wire racks to cool.

White Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

I think we can all agree that the best part of cupcakes is the icing. And that is definitely true of these white chocolate raspberry cupcakes, which are topped with a fluffy pink buttercream icing that includes raspberry extract and melted white chocolate. In fact, I made this recipe into mini cupcakes rather than full-size cupcakes just to have more of an icing to cupcake ratio!  These cupcakes complement the frosting perfectly, because they include pieces of real raspberries as well as raspberry extract, but I could see the frosting working on a simple vanilla cupcake too. And they're adorable with whole raspberries on top:

White Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

(Makes 24 cupcakes)

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1 1/3 cup sugar

2 teaspoons lemon zest

2 teaspoons raspberry extract

1 teaspoon vanilla

6 eggs

3 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 package white chocolate pudding mix

½ cup milk

1 cup frozen raspberries

Raspberries or pearl sprinkles for garnishing

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line a muffin tin with paper liners.  In a food processor, pulse frozen raspberries until finely chopped and set aside.

2. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Mix in lemon zest, raspberry extract, and vanilla. Beat in eggs, one at a time until incorporated.

3. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and pudding mix. Add half the dry ingredient mixture to the butter/sugar mixture, mixing until combined. Mix in the milk and then the rest of the dry mixture.

4. Stir in raspberries. Fill muffin tins ¾ full and bake at 350 for about 18-20 minutes. Cool completely before frosting.

White Chocolate Raspberry Buttercream Frosting:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

½ cup half and half

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ½ teaspoons raspberry extract

Pinch of salt

2-3 drops red food coloring

4 cups powdered sugar

½ cup white chocolate

Directions:

1.  Melt the white chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave and set aside to cool. Cream the butter, vanilla, and raspberry extract until the butter is soft. Beat in 2 cups of powdered sugar.

2. Beat in the half and half and red food coloring. Add the last 2 cups of powdered sugar. Beat until fluffy (this may take several minutes).

3. Beat in the melted white chocolate.  (If the frosting is not the desired consistency, you can add more half and half or more powdered sugar.)

4. Fill a decorator bag with icing and pipe swirls onto cupcakes (I use a Wilton large star tip). Garnish with fresh (or frozen) raspberries or pearl sprinkles.