CupCakes!

Monday was a cloudy, cold day in Kingston, and Drew had a potluck to go to.  I couldn't go, because I had to get on the 401 to Toronto, but we decided that the best thing to do with potluck preparations and a cloudy day was to bake.  After some consultation, we settled on two kinds of cupcakes.

The first was a chocolate brownie cupcake from Curtis Stone's cookbook (at home with Curtis Stone, or something like that).  It was a rich recipe of baker's chocolate melted with syrup (we used maple syrup instead of corn syrup) and butter, with just a touch of flour and a cream cheese and chocolate icing.  We whipped it all up using an old counter-top stand mixer, and boy did those beaters taste really good when we licked them!

Drew decorated them with fruit to make them look like muppet cupcakes (mupcakes!):

The second kind was a pumpkin ginger spice cupcake.  These tasted just like fall, with sugar, eggs, and pumpkin, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and chopped up candied ginger inside.  The recipe makes a huge amount of cupcakes, which was perfect for a potluck dinner.

The recipe didn't include any icing, so we whipped up the rest of the cream cheese for the chocolate icing and just added a heaping cup of icing sugar and some butter.  We topped each one with a little chunk of candied ginger, just so that these cupcakes would feel as pretty as the chocolate ones.

In the end we had two kinds of delicious cupcakes to share with friends (and save for ourselves too).  They both turned out so well - they looked just like the pictures!  I'm always excited when baking turns out well, because it's a process that takes so much care.  With these under our belt (and a delicious peach pie that was the first pie I've ever made - crust and all - and which turned out like magic) I'm starting to worry that I'm going to get a little overconfident with the oven!

Our beautiful cupcakes!  Chocolate brownie, and ginger pumpkin