Challenge: Pumpkin Cupcakes with Rules
My good friend has spent the last four months being told, bit by bit, to cut chunks of delicious options out of her diet as her doctors try to figure out what the hell’s going on with her and why she’s having such a terrible reaction to stuff she eats. So… goodbye onions and garlic. Goodbye chocolate. Goodbye dairy. Goodbye soy. Goodbye gluten. It’s difficult to watch, and I’m only seeing it now and then. I can’t imagine living it.
Meanwhile, Halloween’s here, and that means I’m ready to hunker down and make my annual pumpkin mini cupcakes. So when she sent out invites to her annual pumpkin carving contest, I had a dilemma. I couldn’t walk into her house with just treats she couldn’t eat. I had to find something… something gluten free, dairy free, soy free and chocolate free. I wanted it to at least be comparable to what everyone else would be getting, and I came across a recipe on About.com that I only tweaked slightly.
Here’s what I did, including the specific brands I used. All ingredients except spices were found at Whole Foods.
The recipe for the cupcakes is as follows, with a yield of 48 mini cupcakes.
| INGREDIENTS | INSTRUCTIONS |
| 1 1/2 cups Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose Baking Flour 1 1/2 tsp Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Xanthum Gum 1 1/2 tsp. Hain Featherweight Baking Powder (sodium free, gluten free) 1/2 tsp. Arm & Hammer baking soda 1/2 tsp. 365 Coarse Mediterranean Sea Salt 1 tsp. generic ground cinnamon 1/2 tsp. generic ground ginger 3/4 cup Pacific Organic Pumpkin Puree 1/3 cup Dr. Bronner’s Magic All-One! Fair Trade & Organic Coconut oil (melted, then cooled) 1/3 cup 365 Organic Grade A Maple Syrup 1/2 cup So Delicious Dairy Free Culinary Coconut Milk 2/3 cup 365 Organic Cane Sugar |
Preheat oven to 350 F. Melt coconut oil and set aside to cool. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, sea salt, cinnamon, and ginger in a medium-sized mixing bowl and stir to combine. Set aside. In another mixing bowl, stir together the pumpkin puree, coconut oil, maple syrup, coconut milk, and sugar until combined. In portions of 1/3 at a time, add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, stirring to combine just until mixture is smooth. Line muffin pan with 24 mini cupcake liners and fill with batter to 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, then check. They’re done when the cupcakes spring back when touched and a testing stick comes out clean of batter. (Mine needed 30 min.) Allow cupcakes to cool completely before continuing to ice, frost or glaze. |
The recipe I modded for the cupcakes called for a soy-based frosting that wouldn’t work, so I took a super simple recipe from PopSugar and did a glaze dip followed by a colored sugar dip.
| INGREDIENTS | INSTRUCTIONS |
| 1/4 cup 365 Organic Honey (Mountain Forest, light amber) 1 tbsp Dr. Bronner’s Magic All-One! Fair Trade & Organic Coconut oil (melted, then cooled) 1/2 tsp McCormick Pure Vanilla Extract 1/2 tsp cinnamon |
Stir ingredients together in small bowl Set up colored sugar (I used black and orange) either in separate bowls or one combined for a mixed look Dip the top of the cupcake in the glaze followed quickly by a dip in the sugar |
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