Pumpkins are one of the easier designs for cupcakes, making them ideal for decorating with young children. Like decorating real pumpkins, though, how elaborate or creative pumpkins are is unlimited and can be fun for any age.
The Cake
Any basic cake mix or recipe can be used for pumpkin cupcakes, but you can make it more interesting (and healthy) by making the cakes out of actual pumpkin. Technically a muffin destined for frosting, use a good pumpkin quick bread recipe and divide it into muffin cups. If you scrape enough flesh from the inside of a pumpkin while making a traditional jack-o-lantern, you can cook and mash it like potato to use instead of canned pumpkin.
Boxed mixes work well, too. You turn vanilla batter orange with a few drops of red and yellow food color, or go with a Devil's Food cake for a pretty dark brown and orange (icing) appearance.
The Frosting
Tint store-bought or homemade vanilla, buttercream or cream cheese frosting with red and yellow food coloring to the desired shade. You may have to use quite a bit if you want a brilliant orange---try a gel food coloring, sold at craft and party stores in the specialty baking section.
Spread frosting smoothly and evenly over each cooled cake.
Decorate
Turn your orange-frosted cakes into pumpkins or jack-o-lanterns using icing (try yellow tinted or chocolate/brown), candy or fruit rolls cut into small shapes.
You can also roll out soft fruit candy (Starbursts) or gum drops into pliable sheets that can be shaped or cut. Try cutting out triangles for eyes and noses.
Fruit-shaped candy (Runts) offer lots of decorating options, especially for small decorators.
The Stem
What really makes a pumpkin cupcake look like a pumpkin is the stem. You can even add some curly vines using icing. Anything from a pretzel stick to a cut piece of green licorice, to a green roll candy or icing can finish the cake with a stem nicely.
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