Perfect Pumpkin Cupcakes
These soft pumpkin cupcakes will fulfill all of your fall dessert cravings. Are they packed with pumpkin? Check! Infused with cozy spices? Check! Fast and easy (more time for corn mazes and pumpkin patches!)? Check, check, check! Find me a more simple and satisfying fall dessert–I dare you! This recipe is super quick, with just 20 minutes of prep and another 20 minutes to bake. Thanks to the melted butter, there’s no need to use a mixer and no time spent waiting for butter to soften. Plus, melted butter provides the best, butteriest flavor, so using it here is a no-brainer. We’ll be topping off our pumpkin cupcakes with a brown sugar version of my classic cream cheese frosting, and it’s simply amazing. It’s a silker and thinner variation that pipes beautifully and pairs so well with the pumpkin flavor. You’ll love it!
What You Need
Here are the key ingredients you’ll need to make my pumpkin cupcakes:
Canned pumpkin. Make sure you use 100% pumpkin and NOT pumpkin pie filling! Homemade pumpkin puree can be substituted, but I tend to prefer the canned version in this situation and you’re more likely to get consistent results using the canned stuff.Butter. Generally I prefer to use a blend of oil and butter when making cakes and cupcakes (like my vanilla cake and apple cake). This combo tends to yield a light, soft, and moist texture. However, when it comes to these pumpkin cupcakes, I found that using just butter yields an incredibly soft, moist, and flavorful cupcake–no oil required. In fact, by using just butter we get an even better flavor and lose nothing by way of moisture (and melting it helps really infuse the cupcakes with buttery flavor, too!). This is largely because the pumpkin puree itself adds so much moisture to the cupcakes.Pumpkin spice. This blend of spices adds the perfect flavor to our cupcakes. If you don’t have any on hand, you can make my homemade pumpkin spice!Cream cheese. Use the brick-style, full-fat version. I don’t recommend the spreadable kind that comes in a tub (frosting made with that cream cheese tends to be runny and no good for piping). Brown sugar. Adding a few tablespoons of brown sugar to the frosting adds a subtle depth of flavor (thanks to the molasses in brown sugar).
SAM’S TIP: Beating in a tablespoon or two of heavy cream will make your frosting even silkier and smoother. Whether or not I add it usually depends on how I want my frosting to look on top of my cupcake when I’m finished; if you leave out the cream it will be stiffer and hold its shape when piped. Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Pumpkin Cupcakes
SAM’S TIP: If you’re not a fan of cream cheese frosting, feel free to frost your pumpkin cupcakes with substitute my vanilla frosting, brown butter frosting (also uses cream cheese but it’s a whole different experience!), or my swiss meringue buttercream instead. Today’s frosting would also be great on carrot cake cupcakes, spice cake, or banana cake! Enjoy! Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook This easy recipe was originally published 09/07/2016. Additional information and a new video have been added to help make this post as helpful as possible.
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