Pumpkin Cupcake-Muffins

I call this recipe Pumpkin Cupcake-Muffins, because I was trying to create something that was dense and moist like a muffin, but slightly decadent, like a cake. I was making these for a weekend brunch, so I wanted them to be more appropriate for breakfast than for dessert. My vision was to make individual pumpkin treats that had a layer of cream cheese inside, instead of on top, of the muffin.

This is one of those recipes that sounded good in theory, but didn't work out quite the way I had hoped. But in the end, they turned out great after I did some improvisational tweaking.

Martha Stewart has a great recipe for pumpkin cupcakes (minus the cream cheese) on her web site. This is the basic recipe that I used for the cakes.

I started by whisking together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices in a large bowl.

Next, I used an electric hand mixer to beat together the sugar, eggs, and canola oil (I substituted 1/2 cup oil instead of the butter in Martha's recipe, because I wanted these to resemble pumpkin muffins instead of cupcakes). I also added some molasses for flavor. Normally I would've used my stand mixer for this, but I was trying to keep it clean so I could use it to make the cream cheese layer.

This is what the mixture looked like after I mixed everything together. After creaming the eggs, sugar, and oil, I added the pumpkin puree, and then folded in the flour mixture. I forgot to take a photo of this step (sorry)!

Now I had to figure out how to make the cream cheese layer. I ended up using this recipe:

Cream Cheese Layer:

9 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

¼ cup granulated sugar

¼ cup brown sugar

6 TBSP real maple syrup

1 tsp maple extract

1 TBSP all-purpose flour

1 large egg

Beat all ingredients together for 2 minutes until smooth and creamy.

This is what the ingredients looked like before:

And after:In retrospect, I think this mixture needed to be a LOT thicker. Maybe there was too much maple sugar. Maybe I should have creamed the cream cheese, sugar, and eggs together first, so they could have become lighter and fluffier. The mixture tasted good, but the texture was wrong. Nevertheless, I marched onward.

I tried to layer the cupcake/muffins with a layer of pumpkin cake on the bottom, topped with a layer of the cream cheese mixture, and then another layer of pumpkin cake on top. This didn't work out so well, because the cake mixture was MUCH thicker than the cream cheese layer, so it kind of collapsed. See what I mean?I didn't give up though. I decided to go ahead and bake them, and I crossed my fingers that they would turn out well. They actually baked up fine, although the cream cheese mixture completely blended with the pumpkin cake, and they ended up looking like this.They didn't have a defining cream cheese layer, which I thought was necessary for flavor contrast. So, I decided to whip up a pumpkin cream cheese frosting to put on top of the cakes.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting:

6 oz. cream cheese

1/4 cup pumpkin butter (I bought this from Trader Joe's)

1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

Beat all ingredients together on medium speed for 3-4 minutes until light and fluffy.

This frosting was INCREDIBLE, by the way. I love pumpkin and cream cheese. This would make a great cake frosting.

Because of the additional frosting, these ended up resembling cupcakes more than muffins, but they were still delicious!

Miniature Gingerbread Cakes

I was invited to attend a Fall Baking potluck brunch last weekend, and I wanted to take something seasonal and festive. I had a feeling there would be a lot of apple and pumpkin treats, so I decided to be a rebel and make these gingerbread cakes. Aren't they cute? Ginger is one of my favorite foods, so this was perfect for me. This also gave me an opportunity to use my decorative mini-muffin tins for the first time. This means they were a good investment, right?

As usual, I used the recipe from my copy of Martha's Baking Handbook, but I think this is the identical recipe on Martha's web site.

I made some slight modifications to her original recipe. Her recipe calls for mixing together one cup of boiling water and 2 teaspoons baking soda, setting them aside, and then adding them into the batter as one of the final steps. I've never heard of doing this before. I spent some time searching the internet, trying to figure out what kind of magical chemical reaction occurs when you mix together boiling water and baking soda. I couldn't find anything useful related to cake baking (although I did find a lot of recipes for polishing silver). So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to skip this step entirely. I added the baking soda to the rest of the dry ingredients, and instead of adding one cup of water to the batter, I substituted one cup of milk. I thought this would give the cakes a richer flavor. Did it work? Stay tuned....

First, I sifted together the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, spices) into a large bowl.

Then I creamed the butter and brown sugar together in my stand mixer.
See, nice and fluffy. I added molasses, freshly grated ginger (key ingredient!), eggs, and milk to the butter/sugar mixture. Then I added the flour mixture to the rest of the cake batter. When everything was mixed together, I poured the batter into my cute little cake tin. Correction: my heavily greased cute little cake tin. I was really worried about the batter sticking to my molds, so I used a lot of non-stick spray on these babies.

After 15 minutes in the oven, they were perfectly baked.

I carefully flipped over my cake tin, and they came out of the molds perfectly!

The recipe in Martha's book involves covering the tops of the cake with chocolate ganache. That sounds amazingly good, but I thought it would be a bit heavy for a brunch, so I decided to dust the tops of the cakes with powdered sugar instead. The sugar also emphasized the different shapes of each cake.

Perfect for the holidays! And so tasty, too. I really loved these. They have a very strong ginger flavor, which I love. They also freeze very well, if you wrap them up individually in plastic wrap.

Apple-Spice Layer Cake with Creamy Goat Cheese Frosting

I love to bake, but I'm also inherently lazy. I often prefer to doctor cake mixes instead of baking from scratch. I received a copy of the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook as a gift, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to expand my baking repertoire.

It's mid-September, which means apple season in my neck of the woods. My husband and I have a tradition of going apple-picking at a local farm every fall. We just took our first trip to the farm, and we picked several pounds of delicious early apples - specifically, Jonagold (for baking) and Cameo (for munching). Naturally, I wanted my first Martha recipe to involve apples.

Apple pie seemed too obvious, but then my eyes alighted upon a recipe for an Apple Spice Layer Cake with a Creamy Goat Cheese Frosting. I LOVE goat cheese. I can eat an entire log of it in one sitting. I also love cream cheese frostings on cakes, but they're usually limited to carrot cakes, and I'm not a huge fan of those (I just don't think carrots belong in dessert). I was very excited to try this recipe.

The first step of the recipe is to make, essentially, homemade chunky applesauce. First, I caramelized some sugar in a medium saucepan, and then added chunks of apples and a little bit of lemon juice. I cooked the apples down until they were soft and mushy.

After about 5 more minutes of cooking, I had fresh, homemade applesauce!

While I let the applesauce cool, I mixed together the dry ingredients, including the spices. I increased the spices called for in the recipe, because I've learned that I generally like a little extra cinnamon and nutmeg in my baked goods. I also used grated fresh nutmeg, which smells and tastes fantastic.

I used my Kitchenaid stand mixer to beat together butter, sugar, honey, and eggs. If you don't have a Kitchenaid mixer, and you plan to do a significant amount of baking, you should run out and buy one immediately. It is, by far, my favorite small appliance. After beating in all of the eggs, I added the dry ingredients and mixed on a slower speed. I watched carefully to make sure I didn't overmix the batter.

I divided the batter evenly between two cake pans, and while the cakes were in the oven, I turned my attention to the frosting. It's a very simple recipe - just fresh goat cheese, cream cheese, and powdered sugar, beaten together in my beloved Kitchenaid mixer.

Side note: I'm a very impatient person, and I usually have an incredibly hard time waiting for cakes to cool completely before frosting them. I've tried to frost my share of warm cakes, and I know it causes them to fall apart into a crumbly mess, so I SHOULD KNOW BETTER. But I still don't want to wait 2 hours to frost my cakes. I took a tip from Martha's book, and after I cooled my cake layers on wire racks for 20 minutes, I wrapped them in plastic wrap and stuck them in the fridge for another 40 minutes. Voila - perfectly cooled cakes in half the time!

Per Martha's suggestion, I made caramelized apple slices to decorate the top of my cake. The glazed apples were tasty and delicious! I also topped the cake with a sprinkling of candied ginger, which I had in my pantry.