Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Every year, some friends of mine host a ladies' Yankee swap at the local VFW. This year, we had over 50 women I believe. This year was also the first year I had a decent swap gift in front of me for quite some time. I was number 10, which is the usual for me, a very low number. Somehow, I ended up with a bottle of Grey Goose in front of me until the third to last person, who finally took it. My final gift was a $20 gift certificate to a local Italian restaurant, which is fine, but I wanted the booze. Oh well, there's always next year...

One of the most enjoyable things about the swap is the food. Nothing like a good pot luck lunch to gear you up for a snow storm! I usually bring an appetizer to the swap, but this year I brought cupcakes. I haven't made cupcakes from scratch in a while, my last few batches have been doctored boxed mixes. So these were a bit more time consuming than the last few.

Whenever I make chocolate cupcake, I'm always very skeptical about the recipes. I've had a few recipes that always fail (from different blogs, but they end up very similar, and then when I go back and check, it's the same recipe I've tried in the past and failed as well). I did my research and made sure I had never used this recipe to be sure it wasn't a failure one. I don't think I could handle a kitchen failure this morning.

Side (but related) story. This week has not been the best kitchen week for me. I attempted to make some very simple jam kolaches, and they all (but one!) opened up in the oven, which ruined them. Well ruined the presentation at least, not the taste. Then, we were cooking in my class yesterday, so I get my kids all set up to make apple cider crisp. Not only did the prep work take longer than planned, so they couldn't eat their crisp before dismissal, but as I was trying to get a blender out of our cabinet, a rogue, bent blade found a way to jam itself into my hand. There was some bleeding, and some scared kids, and some kids who yelled "kitchen safety, Miss Crocker!".

So, thankfully, this recipe came out perfect! It might be my go to chocolate cupcake recipe. Everyone commented on how moist the cakes were. AND, it doesn't even require eggs. So, I'm guaranteed to always have everything this recipe needs on hand. As the cupcakes were cooling and I was putting away the ingredients, the next kitchen disaster struck. A whole, giant bottle of vegetable oil slipped out of my hands, fell to the floor, and the plastic cap broke right off, spilling oil all over the kitchen floor. Not only is oil a total bitch to clean (pardon the language), but I have a 5 month old puppy. Yeah. Luckily Dan was able to grab her and crate her while I got to cleaning up the spill.

The pumpkin spice cream in this recipe is fantastic. If I had thought it out before hand, I would have filled the cakes and piped some of the top with the chocolate buttercream. There's no pumpkin involved, just the spices you would find in a pumpkin pie. I used my pumpkin pie spice from Trader Joes, which is a little different than your standard pumpkin pie spices, but you can use the regular cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.

Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes
adapted from A Farmgirl's Dabbles

For the cake:
3 cups flour
6 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tbsp. vinegar
2 cups cold water
2 tsp vanilla

For the cream filling:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 jar marshmallow crème (like Fluff)
3 tsp Trader Joe's Pumpkin Pie Spice
OR 2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1/4 tsp allspice, 1/8 tsp cloves

For the frosting:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3-4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 muffin pans with liners.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the dry cake ingredients. Make 3 small wells in the dry ingredients.
3. In a small bow combine the oil and vinegar and pour into the well in the dry mix. Pour cold water on top of everything and mix with a fork.
4. Add vanilla and mix.
5. Fill each liner 2/3 full and bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool.
6. For the filling, beat together the butter and marshmallow. Add in the spices and mix until fully combined and fluffy.
7. For the frosting, beat the butter until smooth and fluffy in the bowl of a stand mixer. With the mixer on low, add the powdered sugar one cup at a time. Once the sugar is mixed in enough to not "puff out" (as I call it), increase the speed to high and give it a good mixing for a minute or two.
8. Return speed to low and add the cream, vanilla and cinnamon and mix until combined.
9. Add the chocolate and beat on high speed for 2 minutes until nice and whipped and fluffy.
10. To assemble, cut out the centers of each cupcake and fill with marshmallow cream. Pipe chocolate frosting on top and eat!

Everyone loved these. They said they were some of the best yet. The cake was moist and the perfect amount of chocolate, not overbearing, and the cream filling was a nice flavor with the chocolate.