Pumpkin Cupcakes

These pumpkin cupcakes were actually the other flavor that my friend wanted for her daughter's christening.  I've been wanting to do something this autumn with marzipan and thought the little pumpkins would be cute.  This is an idea I've seen a few places and is in the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book. I used that recipe for the pumpkin cupcakes, but did my marzipan pumpkins a little different, primarily as I don't have a leaf cutter that is that small.  I made cream cheese frosting to go with the pumpkin cupcake, but I made a triple recipe to be able to frost a few dozen cupcakes.  I have some leftover that I'll freeze to use later - maybe for red velvet cake for the holidays.

I reconstituted my marzipan with corn syrup after it thawed.  At first I thought I'd need to scratch it, but it ended up coming together after a lot of kneading.  I used Americolor Electric Orange and Leaf Green to color the marzipan for the pumpkin decorations.

They turned out nice and bright! I could've gone easier on the green. 

I don't have a tiny leaf cookie cutter, so I used this cutter and then snipped it into smaller pieces to use as the stem.

I rolled out the orange and cut it into pieces to have enough to put on all the cupcakes.

I rolled the orange pieces into little balls and set them aside on parchment paper so they wouldn't stick to the counter.

When I put them all together, I dipped the stem in a tiny bit of corn syrup to help it stick. Then I used a toothpick to put ridges on the sides of the pumpkins.

I love them - how cute!  I didn't take the time to carve a pumpkin this year, but I made my own!

A pumpkin patch of cupcakes...

Pumpkin Cake with Caramel Sauce

My sister and I both baked pie pumpkins and made homemade pies for Thanksgiving. My sister had extra that she froze and decided to make a pumpkin cake recipe that we had in one of our parenting magazines and brought it up to our place for Christmas. However, with all the treats that we had, we never ended up having it while everyone was here. So, she was gracious enough to leave a few pieces for us and I made the caramel sauce for Sean and I to have a treat one evening. It was a nice moist cake which wasn't overpowered with pumpkin. The caramel sauce was flavoured with apple cider and was the perfect compliment. It would be a great Thanksgiving dessert next year.

Homemade Pumpkin Pie

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This was the first year that I tried making pumpkin pie from scratch. I've always made my own pastry and mixed together the filling, but I've typically used canned pumpkin. I roasted a sugar or pie pumpkin a few weeks ago, pureed the cooked pumpkin and kept it in the freezer until a few days before Thanksgiving. I used Martha Stewart's "Classic Pumpkin Pie" recipe for the filling and used homemade pastry and made an oak leaf pattern around the edge with the extra pastry. It was well worth it as the flavor was fantastic, especially served along with pumpkin whip cream.