Spiced Pumpkin Cupcakes

In a few weeks, my company will be having a large awards celebration.  I'm on the committee to chose the awards.  Somehow that got translated into me also making about 150-200 cupcakes for the event.  Not that I'm complaining (hopefully I can pull off making that many in my small apartment kitchen), I enjoy doing these things.  I put together a list of cupcake ideas and they promptly requested a taste testing.  How else could they properly evaluate?  (My kind of people!)  Last night I made a few different cupcakes as part of the "taste testing".  One of which was the Vegan Lavender Cupcakes with Lemon Frosting.  The others were a Salted Caramel Cupcake (to be posted over the next day or so) and the Spiced Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon and Cream Cheese Frosting. 

Cupcakes:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground all-spice
4 large eggs
1 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup light-brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 15 ounce can pumpkin puree

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.  Line cupcake tin with paper liners.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking powders, salt and spices. In another large bowl, combine sugar, eggs, melted butter and pumpkin puree with an electric mixer on med-low until well combined.  (You want the melted butter to be cooled slightly as to not cook the eggs when combined.)

Then in batches add the flour mixture. Beat until well combined and there are no clumps.  The batter will be thick.  Add the batter to the prepared tin.  Fill about halfway.  Bake for 15-17 minutes.


Frosting:
4 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
4 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 tablespoon Vietnamese cinnamon

Using an electric mixer, cream the cream cheese and butter together. Add the vanilla and cinnamon. Then in batches, add the powdered sugar. You may need to add in additional confectioners’ sugar to get the desired consistency (for thicker frosting, add more sugar). At first this doesn’t seem like a lot of frosting, but it will easily frost at least 24 cupcakes.