Pumpkin Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

So this blog hasn't even been up for a month and I'm already failing at regularly updating it. This is partly due to laziness and partly due to the fact that I have a ridiculous saga of continuous ankle sprains, the details of which I'd rather not bore you with. Suffice it to say that I've been mostly couch bound since last Saturday. Anyway, a week later, with the help of a very supportive ankle brace, I'm feeling a bit better. Not enough to jump up and down really hard or go walking aimlessly, but enough to make a dessert that requires minimal effort and results in maximum flavor.

Behold! Pumpkin cupcakes with delicious cocoa powder based chocolate frosting! Rich enough to make the most incorrigibly sweet toothed people such as myself satisfied after eating a mere two, and yet having a close enough resemblance to a wholesome pumpkin muffin (on the bottom half anyway) that you can convince yourself that it wasn't totally 100% dessert.

By the way, please ignore my total lack of frosting ability. I've never gotten into the actual real-pastry-bag-and-tips gig. I tend to just snip the end of a plastic freezer bag, load up, and cover until total frosting domination has occurred to my satisfaction. It still tastes just as good right? I found this recipe here. The only changes I made were omitting the mini chocolate chips in the cupcake batter and replacing the cinnamon, nutmeg, and ground cloves with a teaspoon and a half of pumpkin pie spice. Below is a shot of the cupcakes pre-frosting attack.

I had a bite of one before the frosting and, as the blogger who came up with this recipe stated, they are completely delicious by themselves. The actual cupcake batter portion of this recipe has only 1/2 cup sugar, so you could definitely eat them as a breakfast muffin rather than a cupcake if you prefer. But really, why would you do that when you can put fudgy chocolate frosting on top? :)

My favorite part of this frosting is the fact that the chocolate flavor comes from cocoa powder. If you're a chocoholic like me, deep, dark, rich chocolate flavor is always preferable to excessively sweetened icing with a side of chocolate. Basically, chocolate being the dominant aspect is always better. Cocoa powder will always help you achieve this much better than an icing made with melted milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate will.

Of course, ganache is a whole different story. If you're curious about that subject, this cake exemplifies the use of perfect, shiny chocolate ganache as icing and also employs another trick to give your chocolate desserts that rich taste: strong coffee. Not too much mind you, but a little goes a long way toward adding another level to your chocolate cake. Annnnddd now I'm officially going off on a chocolate related side tangent. See what chocolate does to me? Forget "this is your brain on drugs" PSAs. "This is your brain on chocolate" is more accurate for this lady over here.

Anyway, moral of the recipe story is that these cupcakes were equal parts moist pumpkin goodness and rich chocolate sinfulness and I will definitely, absolutely, positively be making them again sometime. Hopefully, since Halloween is approaching, I will get myself into gear and make some more posts on the many DIY Halloween projects I've tackled over the years. Until then, adieu, au revoir, and do yourself a favor this week and bake with some pumpkin.