pumpkin cupcakes!

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've posted! But really, I haven't been up to much.

A while ago a pumpkin plant grew out of Toby's chook run. It grew quite a few pumpkins so I got to take one. We've had it a few weeks now and I've been too lazy to do anything with it, but I knew I wanted to try making cupcakes with it. I had today off work so I decided to finally give it a go (mainly because mum had cut into it for a dinner and we didn't want it to go off).
For the cupcakes I had to make a pumpkin puree. Which involved roasting the pumpkin first. I've never roasted anything before because I'm not a huge fan of roasts, so it was a challenge. Mum was out so I couldn't ask her so I consulted the old internet. Which wasn't actually that helpful and I ended up roasting it on what I now know is a chicken roasting rack. It did kind of work but it would have been easier just to chuck it in. It also didn't cook through evenly which didn't really matter because of the next few steps. When it was all cooked I scooped the flesh out and put it in a food processor which worked ok. Then i had to strain it through a sieve, which was tough work! But it was a nice puree after that.
Then I could make cupcakes!
I used this recipe but I halved it because I didn't want to make that many. I also didn't stick with the exact measurements for the spices because I didn't have ground nutmeg so I added a bit of spicemix to it on top of all the other spices.
Instead of using the cream cheese icing the recipe calls for, I decided to use the marshmallow cream (cheap Fluff) I bought from the reject shop instead! Which was amazing! That stuff works SO well as icing that I'm going to have to go back sometime this week and see if they have anymore left, and then buy it ALL.  It makes these cupcakes even more delicious.
And after making these, it makes me a little jealous of America! With their canned pumpkin puree and their Fluff. And speaking of America, I went to tea with some friends this afternoon (gave them a cupcake each and they thought they were great! Yes!!) and went to the yankee candle shop. I ended up buying an autumn fruits votive which smells incredible and got my friend hooked on them. Enough blabbling, here's some pictures of the cooking!

pureeing pumpin

creaming the butter

This is all that's left now...