HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Happy Halloween to All out there!

That's our scary skull jack-o-lantern carved by Pete and I earlier this week. We live in condos so I hope leaving this outside will attract at least 1 trick-or-treater. I just love this time of year as it marks the beginning of the holiday season. In keeping with tradition of both the sweetest of the holidays and my family's long-time love of holiday baking, I decided to take on my first pumpkin bread (which also turned into cupcakes) as well as my first cream cheese frosting all seen in the spread below.

Pumpkin Bread, Cupcakes, and Cream Cheese Frosting

First I must admit that I have an ongoing love affair with www.allrecipes.com. Out of all the major cooking sites, and trust me I have been to them all, allrecipes.com has the best variety and the best community interaction. Before I start any recipe I read as many reviews as my attention span can handle and then I dive right in! The recipe I used for the pumpkin bread and cupcakes is linked by Amy Posont. The minor changes I made were to the temperature and time as well as the amount of spices. I turned the temp up form 300 to 325 and baked the bread for 1hr. 15min but the cupcakes were done in about 30min. For the spices, I upped the nutmeg and allspice to 2 tsps. and the cinnamon to 3 tsps. Other than that, this recipe is the bees knees and totally easy for a first timer. :0


The cream cheese frosting recipe also came from allrecipes.com and is by Susan Lugdon. Once again, the reader reviews were uber helpful and helped me figure out before hand that my pumpkin cupcakes are going to be very sweet so I didn't need to use 5 cups of confectioners sugar. Instead, I used 3 cups. I also chilled the frosting for about 2 hours before heaving it on top of my cupcakes. All that was needed was a candy corn on top and these pumpkin cupcakes are all the Halloween treats me and my family need!