Alana
For Halloween, The Tea Girl hosted a customer appreciation event aka Halloween party. As very loyal customers, the nursing crew and I scored ourselves invites. This year’s theme is dead celebrities; unfortunately I do not look like anybody who is both dead and famous. Theresa, Katherine and I tossed around a few fictional ideas like Kenny from Southpark (he dies every episode, it would be so perfect), Mufasa (you don’t get much more famous than Mufasa), and probably a few, less note-worthy ideas. After the majority of our babble, it suddenly came to me that I should be Betty Crocker for Halloween! I got really excited, told everybody about my costume plans and that I was going to bring cupcakes, did some research on Betty Crocker, and… discovered she isn’t a real person. Oops.
Casual hangout with Freddie Mercury and Holly Golightly.
This of course, did not stop me from going on with my full-force plan to be Betty Crocker. As far as the cupcakes go, I decided it would be best to use box cake and frosting. I made this decision for two reasons: 1) It is in theme with my costume, and 2) I’m actually going to another party after the dead celebrity party, and therefore need lots of cupcakes (aka a double batch is more convenient when you’re using box cake).
The many cupcakes!
I figured pumpkin cupcakes would be appropriate for Halloween, so I searched on all recipes for pumpkin cupcakes that use box cake. The recipe I found was basically just the box cake recipe with some pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice. Good enough for me.
The ghosts are spooky, but the owls are cute 🙂
I used a white box cake like the original recipe suggested, but only because I didn’t see any spice cake boxes, which I think would be better. I also used whole eggs in my recipe rather than egg whites because the whole point of excluding the yolks is to keep the cake white. This seemed irrelevant for my cupcakes because the pumpkin puree was going to turn them orange, yolk or no yolk.
You can see how orange the cake turned out!
For the frosting I picked up a couple tubs of the whipped cream cheese frosting. It didn’t really taste cream cheese like, so I added some in; it was a decision I did and didn’t expect to make. I was doubtful that I would find cream cheese frosting, so I assumed that I would need to but regular frosting and whip in some cream cheese. When I did find the cream cheese frosting, I didn’t think I would need the extra cream cheese so I didn’t bother to pick any up at the store. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t think that the Betty Crocker version was flavourful enough, hence my predicament. I fortunately found an unopened round tub of cream cheese in the fridge. For each tub of frosting, I used half of the cream cheese container (I’m not sure how much that is, but you can see how big the cream cheese was in the picture below).
The frosting piped quite nicely, though I wasn’t a huge fan of the texture. Don’t get me wrong, it was very silky, but not in the way that frosting made from scratch is. This frosting had more of a synthetic quality to it, which didn’t float my boat in the same way. I would definitely stick to homemade cream cheese frosting. So much yummier.
Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting – Betty Crocker Style
Ingredients
- 1 box spice cake (I think spice would be best, but white worked fine)
- 1 ¼ cup water
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 3 eggs
- 15 oz can pumpkin puree (I couldn’t find this size, so I just got a giant can and used half)
- Tub of cream cheese frosting
- ½ container of cream cheese
Directions
- Line cupcake pans with spooky cupcake liners (or less spooky ones, your choice). Set oven to 350 degrees.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the box cake mix, water, oil, eggs, pumpkin puree, and pumpkin pie spice. Mix on low until ingredients are combined, then on medium until the batter is consistent. Box says 2 minutes.
- Fill the cupcakes up 2/3, and bake for 20 minutes.
- Remove from the oven when a toothpick comes out clean, and let cool.
- In a medium sized bowl, add half of a cream cheese container and beat until mostly smooth. Add the cream cheese frosting, continuing to beat until smooth.
- Once cupcakes are cooled, ice, and enjoy 🙂
Chateau Gateau 