Make These Wholesome Pumpkin Cupcakes For National Dessert Day
In honor of National Dessert Day on October 14th, we decided to give a healthy take on classic Fall flavors. October– as anyone with eyes and tastebuds knows– is pumpkin month, so we would remiss to pass up an opportunity to incorporate Fall’s reigning flavor. We made pumpkin cupcakes but gave them a healthy update, swapping out refined sugars for date sugar (which contains all the same nutrients as dates) and using raw turbinado sugar (which has trace amounts of calcium and iron). Both date sugar and raw turbinado sugar have a stronger taste than standard sugars, which allows you to use smaller amounts. We topped our cupcakes with a salted caramel and spiced buttercream. Check out the recipe below!
Wholesome Pumpkin Cupcakes
1 hourIngredients
For the cake:
- 1 1/3 cup flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- pinch of nutmeg
- seeds of half a vanilla bean
- 1/3 cup canned pumpkin
- 1/3 cup dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup date sugar
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 2 eggs
For the frosting:
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 16 oz. neufchatel
- 2 1/2 cups ground cane sugar
- 2 Tbsp salted caramel
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- pinch of nutmeg
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350ºF and line a muffin tin with cupcake wrappers.
Whisk dry ingredients for cake together in a medium bowl. Set aside and mix all wet ingredients (except eggs) together until there are no lumps. Add the eggs one at a time.
Fold half the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients using a rubber spatula. Make sure it is well combined before folding in the second half.
Fill the cupcake wells 2/3 of the way with the batter. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
In a high speed mixer, fluff the butter for the frosting. Add the rest of ingredients (except salted caramel) and continue to mix. Add the salted caramel last.
When the cupcakes have cooled, frost away!
