Fandom Flavors: The Pumpkin King

Fandom Flavors [Halloween Edition]: The Pumpkin King

Pumpkin cake loaded with chocolate chips, filled with dark chocolate ganache’ and topped with a creamy maple-nutmeg buttercream. Finished with a fondant Jack Skellington bow-tie.

What you'll Need: (Makes about 16)

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ginger

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup Mini chocolate chips (I used dark chocolate but use what you like!)

1 ¼ cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup canned pumpkin (NOT Pumpkin pie filling.)

What to Do:

1. Heat the oven to 350º and line a 12-cup muffin tin with bake cups. Black is pretty right for this. Or if this is 2spooky use pink. Everyone will be like wait, what?

2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and salt. Toss in your mini chocolate chips. (This will kepp them from just sinking into the bottom of your batter. Cool, huh?) Set the mixture aside. Maybe sing it a song.

3. In a separate mixing bowl, stir together the oil and sugar. Whisk in the eggs and stir in the vanilla extract. Tell oil that it should stop calling milk. They would never work!

4. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and gently stir the mixture until well combined. Don’t over-mix or you could get a dry cake.

5. Stir the pumpkin into the batter until it is thoroughly combined. Spoon the batter into the lined muffin tins about 2/4 of the way or so. I always use an ice cream scoop so they come out uniformly domed. Bake for 20 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle of one cupcake comes out clean. Let the cupcakes sit for 10 minutes and then remove to a rack to cool thoroughly. Or convince yourself that cupcakes should be eaten hot and burn yourself on the rack. Oops.

The Buttercream:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted softened Butter

3 Cups Powdered Sugar

1 Tbsp Ground Nutmeg

1 1/2 Tsp Maple Extract (NOT maple syrup)

1 Egg White

½ Cup Heavy Whipping cream

What to Do:

1. Cream your butter on medium high speed. Add your powdered sugar in measured doses on low speed.

2. Add your egg white, whipping on medium-high speed again. Slowly add your nutmeg and your maple extract.

3. Mix on High for 3-5 minutes. Add your heavy cream slowly. Continue beating for 2-3 minutes. This suckah’ will get so amazingly light. Oh so yummy.

For the bow-tie, I just cut out a cool shape twice out of black fondant (for both ends of the bow-tie) and then curled the edges. I then rolled itsy bitsy lines of light and ‘glued’ them with a bit of water. For the bat middle, I just free handed a bad face and then added some rolled white fondant eyes. Glue the whole thing together with some more water and let dry before adding to your cupcake!