Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

Over the weekend my sister had a pretty fancy wine party. She lives in a condo with a huge balcony that just happened to be overlooking a Jazz Festival that night. There was tons of delicious food that you wouldn't eat just any day. Im pretty sure that I had my fill of cheese for quite a while! I decided to bring cupcakes and since I had so much leftover pumpkin puree and pumpkin truffle filling, I decided I needed to incorporate it. It is fall afterall, there needs to be pumpkin at every party! I had actually been asking around to see what the rule was for adding pumpkin puree to a box cake mix, since I had a chocolate box sitting in the pantry, and got help from a blog post by Joelen who adapted it from Hello, Cupcake! So mine is another variation on that. They turned out really moist with just enough pumpkin flavor, but not overpowering. I always use Magnolia's vanilla buttercream recipe, so I just tweaked it a bit this time so that I could incorporate the truffle filling.

Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes (adapted from Joelen)
1 box chocolate cake mix
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
4 eggs
1/4 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place liners into 2 cupcake pans.

Disregard ingredients on the box mix. combine the above ingredients and mix until smooth and everything is incorporated. Fill liners 2/3 way full. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool, then top with icing and serve.


Vanilla-Pumpkin Truffle Butter Cream Icing (adapted slightly from Magnolia)
1 Cup (2 sticks)Unslated Butter, room temp
8-9 Cups Confectioners Sugar
1/2 Cup Milk
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 Cup pumpkin truffle filling

Cream butter and 4 Cups sugar. Add Milk, Vanilla and remaining Sugar and mix until combined and smooth. Add Pumpkin Truffle filling and mix. Add more sugar if needed, to keep consistency thick enough to pipe on cupcake without having it droop.