Bread & Preserves, Desserts, Recipes, Snacks · October 11, 2021

Pumpkin Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Name: Pumpkin Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 19 min
Ingredients: 1 and 1/2 cups + 2 Tbsp. of all-purpose flour; 1 cup pumpkin puree; 2/3 cup granulated sugar; 1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed; 1/2 cup very mild olive oil or canola oil; 2 large eggs; 2 tsp. ground cinnamon; 1.5 tsp. vanilla extract; 1 tsp. baking powder; 1 tsp. nutmeg; 1/4 tsp. baking soda; 8 oz. cream cheese; 1/2 cup unsalted butter; 2 & 3/4 cup powdered sugar; 1 & 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

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Are you a pumpkin person? I am. Frankly, I don’t need it to be a certain season to eat pumpkin. I’m the kind of girl who could happily eat it year-round and savor each bite of it. Each bit of it tastes like warm, comfort food to me.

But as life so often goes, most things have a season. Luckily, here we are coming up to the end of “pumpkin season” and before we exchange our lovely gourds for cranberries and chocolate, I have a simple pumpkin recipe for you that will never get old.

My Pumpkin Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting is a recipe I created about two years ago. We were under contract for the farm and desperately trying to get our house ready to sell. But, I was a blogger and felt as if fall was passing me by without giving me a moment to indulge in all its flavors fully.

Creating my pumpkin cupcakes recipe

One afternoon I set out to make this recipe – based on an even older recipe of mine on my old mom blog – just to squeeze a little more sugar and spice into the season. I added a dash of this, took away a dash of that and in the end created something that will be a fall family tradition for us…that we might just eat in May too. 🙂

With Thanksgiving just weeks away, the cold nights and crisp days, these Pumpkin Cupcakes feel like a homecoming of sorts. One of those familiar, old friends that you look forward to seeing…but with cream cheese frosting.

Ingredients for pumpkin cupcakes

You might be familiar with most of the ingredients you need to make pumpkin cupcakes. But the most important one will be the pumpkin itself. You can find my recipe for making homemade pumpkin puree {HERE}. I promise, it’s really simple and once you do it, you will never use pumpkin from a can again.

If you’re familiar with my recipes, then you know I often use a mild olive oil in place of other oils in my baked goods. For instance, I use olive oil in my favorite white cake recipe {HERE}. Or, I cut out the oil altogether and replace it with something else, usually sour cream or mayo. In this recipe I am using olive oil. However, if you can’t find a mild olive oil (no extra virgin here) use canola oil as a substitute. You don’t want to throw off the taste profile of the pumpkin.

The perfect flavor profile

You know how sometimes you go into those specialty cupcake shops, really excited to sample their cupcakes? Then you take one bite and find out the cupcakes taste like muffins? Or that they’re so dry you can’t finish it? Has anyone else had this experience?

Well, my goal with these was to avoid creating a cupcake that tasted like a muffin (because they’re two different things!) and to make a cupcake that’s moist, delicious and tastes like something my grandma would make.

All that said, I feel pretty proud of this little recipe. I love the light pumpkin flavor – not too much “spice” – and how moist the cake is. It’s soft, sweet and will give you all the fall feels.

The cream cheese frosting

You might not believe this, but I’m not actually the biggest fan of frosting. Similar to my issue above with texture and sweetness in the cake part of cupcakes, I often find frosting too sweet or gritty. But this, frosting for the Pumpkin cupcakes? This cream cheese frosting I LOVE. And by LOVE I mean, I will lick it directly from the mixer attachments.

When making cupcakes I almost always use this frosting. I have a few exceptions, one that can be found on this white cake recipe {HERE} and a whipped frosting that I made for an ice cream cake on old mom blog, which I promise to put here someday too.

In the meantime, though, you can find the full recipe for these delicious, sweet and flavorful Pumpkin Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting below. If you’re a big pumpkin fan you can also find my recipe for Pumpkin Bread that my children devour {HERE}.

My kitchen favorites

Here are a few of my favorite things for making cupcakes and muffins:

Goodgrips Non-stick Pro Muffin Tin
Perfect results Non-Stick Bakeware
Stainless Steel French Whisk
Nesting mixing bowls (We have these in an older color but I love them so much we bought two sets.)
Glass Prep Bowls

Thank you so much for visiting today, friends! I hope you’ll come back again to see what else we’re up to at Sugar Maple Farmhouse. For more pumpkin recipes click {HERE}.