With fall on my mind, I just had to make something with pumpkin. Pumpkin Cupcakes with Brown Butter Frosting? Yes, please! They sound like a great way for me to practice my baking skills and satisfy my sweet tooth. Oh, and Thanksgiving is coming up, and these cupcakes sound like they’ll be a good but different seasonal dessert. Let’s find out!
These Pumpkin Cupcakes are the perfect fall dessert! Perfectly spiced pumpkin cupcakes topped with an easy brown butter frosting and drizzled with salted caramel sauce. A must-bake this fall!
The Ingredients
Okay, the list of ingredients for this recipe is pretty long. The good news is it’s full of pantry staples like sugar, flour, vegetable oil, and spices. I had most of the ingredients on hand and needed to buy very little. The rest is pretty ordinary, so everything I needed to buy was easy to find and inexpensive.
I opted to buy the caramel sauce instead of making it myself. It wasn’t actually part of the recipe and saved me a bit of time. I love cooking, but I have limits!
The Process
These cupcakes went together surprisingly fast, and I finished them in far less time than I expected. Instead of the 1 hour 25 minutes listed, I had my cupcakes ready in just 48 minutes, not including time to cool. Here’s how the time broke down:
- 13 minutes to prep and make browned butter
- 25 minutes to cook and make the frosting
- 10 minutes to frost and add caramel sauce and pecans
- 48 minutes total
Since I planned to frost them the same day I baked them, I made the browned butter right after I prepped the muffin pan. I let it cool in the skillet while I made the cupcake batter. After putting the cupcakes into the oven to bake, I poured the warm browned butter into a ramekin and put it into the refrigerator to finish cooling.
I washed the dishes I had used so far then got started on the frosting. The browned butter was cool by the time I needed it, and my frosting was finished before the cupcakes were baked.
I let the cupcakes cool before I frosted them. That gave me a chance to check out a video on how to use my round piping tip since this would be the first time. It was easier than I thought it would be, but I did double the recipe to make sure I didn’t run out. It was a smart move, and I had just a little leftover when I was done.
Once I had the frosting done, I heated a few tablespoons of caramel sauce in my microwave for 15 seconds. Then I drizzled it onto each cupcake. I did it in an ‘X’ pattern, but I didn’t try to be too neat. The beauty of drizzled toppings is in their messiness.
Finally, I put about 1/4 cup of chopped pecans into a ziplock bag and crushed them with a meat mallet. The chopped pieces were just too big for my liking. Then all I had to do was sprinkle them over the cupcakes, and I was done.
Decorating with the caramel sauce and chopped pecans was messy. I put my cupcakes on a baking sheet for those steps to contain the mess. Otherwise, I would have had caramel sauce and pecans all over the place!
