Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes With Maple Frosting and a Corn Maze

I was doing my normal perusing of the news and happened upon this lovely recipe.

http://magazine.foxnews.com/recipe/pumpkin-spice-cupcakes

I printed it out and finally made them. I did have a partial can of pumpkin and this was the perfect solution.

CUPCAKE BATTER NOTES: I used pumpkin spice in place of the nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon request and then still added more cinnamon. I also added vanilla to the cupcake mix and the butter I used WAS salted -- I just didn't add the salt. ANDDDDDD I replaced the honey with maple syrup to go along with the theme. And I did NOT add the 1/3 cup hot water when mixing. I used a hand held mixer and it worked just fine.

FROSTING NOTES:  I only did HALF of the frosting ingredients and still had leftovers. I'm not sure why they had you make so much. I did go a little bit heavy on the maple syrup - for taste. And of course I added MORE vanilla than it said. I did not do any of the fondant stuff. I was just making this for the fam and they didn't need all those extra pretties.

I have this  nifty flower cupcake maker pan and thought I'd try it out. Well, these are the ones I didn't frost and they are slightly scorched, because of my over hot oven. However...

You can't really see the pretty flower cupcake part, because there's frosting all over them. I need to rethink what muffins/cupcakes to  make so that I can showcase that fine mold -- next time.

And maple buttercream frostingggggg. Yummmmmmmmm!!!

These lovely cupcakes are a hit and so delicious!! I don't know why I don't fix pumpkin stuff ALL year instead of just in the fall. 

This past weekend we went to a local corn maze. We've lived at our humble abode for many, many years and finally went.  It was fun. We basically followed C#1 and C#2 around -- whoever we deemed was in charge. Let's just say there were some arguments and debate on who was the better leader. 

Andddd unfortunately it is that time of year, too...  Halloween candy. UGHHHHH!!  Between baking and extra sweets, I'm going to weigh 500 lbs when this is all said and done.  At least we picked the good mix -- no grody kinds that no one will touch.

Till next time...