Food Friday: It’s National Pumpkin Month!

And it is also National Dessert Month!

Heavens to Betsy! However shall we deal with two such charming prospects? Let’s start at the very beginning, and learn how to prepare pumpkin purée, so you can leave the cans of Libby’s on the grocery store shelves and do more than decorate with all of the pumpkins you are going to haul home from this weekend’s farmers’ markets.

Pumpkin Purée

Ingredients
3 pounds sliced pumpkin
½ cup water

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375°F and put the pumpkin chunks on a cookie sheet with sides or a big sheet cake pan – skin-side down or up – it doesn’t matter.
Pour the water in the pan. Roast for 45 minutes until fork tender.
Remove the pumpkin from skin when it is still warm. Purée in a food processor or blender until it is smooth. Store it in a container in the fridge for about a week or freeze some of it for a later use.

Now that you have some purée on hand, it is time to get baking! And because it is National Dessert Month you have to bake something sweet and wicked and pumpkin-y. (Next week is National American Beer Week, in case you wondered…)

I am a big fan of cupcakes. They are small, sweet and finite. We don’t live in a big hipster city, so I haven’t experienced many artisinal bakeries that specialize in solely cupcakes. We wandered into the Hummingbird Bakery in London one cold wet November and were delighted by their wee, sweet, and colorful cakes, but I missed all the hoopla and hours standing in line in New York at the trendy Magnolia Bakery, which was made famous and desirable by Sex and the City – though I doubt whether those skinny-mini actors actually ate any of the cupcakes… I would opt for the cupcakes over their shoes, though.

Cupcakes are a temptation you don’t have to resist; they are a perfect form of portion control. Plus you can enjoy delicately peeling away the fluted paper cup, and remember that it is a lifelong skill you mastered in first grade, perhaps. If you have no impulse management at all you can go buy half a dozen pumpkin pecan cupcakes at Magnolia for $24, or you can bake some more humble – yet equally delish pumpkin cupcakes – yourself, and pocket about $20. https://store.magnoliabakery.com/pumpkin-pecan-cupcake-p44.aspx

Here is a family-sized recipe for pumpkin cupcakes.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting – makes 18 2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon coarse salt (we like crunchy Maldon salt)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin purée (but you have yours safely tucked up in the fridge!)
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cupcake pans with paper liners; set aside. In a medium sized bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice together and set aside.
In a big bowl, whisk the sugars, butter, and eggs. Add dry ingredients, and whisk until smooth. Stir in the pumpkin purée.
Divide batter evenly among liners, I use a plastic measuring cup, either the quarter cup or the third of a cup, depending on the size of the cupcake. (Too much math for me to figure out mini cupcake measurements, though. You will need to eyeball those.) Fill them each about halfway. Bake until tops spring back when touched, or if the toothpick comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Let the pan cool on a rack.
It is the taste of pumpkin pie without the holiday trappings or in-law trauma!

Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
1/2 cup of butter (1 stick, 4 ounces), room temperature
8 ounces of Philadelphia cream cheese (1 package), room temperature
2 to 3 cups of confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla – pure extract – no imitation!

Use an electric mixer and beat the cream cheese and butter together until completely smooth, about 3 minutes on medium speed. Then use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl to be sure that the mixture is evenly mixed

Beat in the vanilla. With the mixer running, slowly add in the powdered sugar. Confectioners’ sugar has cornstarch that will help thicken the frosting, as well as making it sweet. Keeping adding confectioners’ sugar until the frosting is thick enough to schmear in an satisfyingly artistic fashion across the tops of the cupcakes. Decorate with abandon. Candy corn or sprinkles are encouraged, or the edible dragées, the silver ball bearings that the Doctor so adores. And what are you going to do with that $20?

“First we eat, then we do everything else.”
― M.F.K. Fisher