Pumpkin Cupcakes!!!!

The girls and I made these yummy items this past weekend. They were such a hit at our family party that I wanted to share them.

Here's the items needed. I found everything at Walmart.

* 1 cake mix and ingredients it calls for. I wanted spice but they were out so I settled for lemon.

* Frosting (I went with cream cheese. Ashley came up with the idea of adding an extra cream package, so we did and LOVED IT. I recommend a 1/2 a pkg. cream cheese with 2 TBSP milk. Beat well with mixers adding milk slowly to avoid lumps. We went to thin and had to improvised a bit so I'm not sure on the exact amount of milk. This not only adds a stronger cream cheese flavor but stretches the frosting a bit.

* Yellow and red food coloring

* Green marshmellows (I found these in the bakers section with the regular marshmellows. If you can't find them I think green tootsie rolls or gum drops would work great.)

* Imbelishments. I love the ones we found in test tube!!! To fun.

* I used a mini bunt pan for the big pumpkins (also found at wallyworld) but I think a reg. cupcake pan would be fine.

* Bakers joy or Pam

I like this pan because it forms such a nice round top for the pumpkins and a good indentation for the stem, but use what you have.

Just a good close up of the marshmallows and bones.

Do all the cake mix steps and add food coloring to desired color. I started with 10 red and 12 yellow then a few of each till I reached I color I liked

Spray the pan REALLY WELL with cooking spray. My pan has many crevices so I sprayed it to death. I also washed it in between batches.

Fill half full with batter and cook according to directions.

Remove from pan and let cool for a few minutes. If you are using a pan like mine, you will want to cut the round top off so you have a good flat surface to attach two cakes together. I used a good sharp knife and just trimmed the very top off. You'll have to play with what to do with a different pan. I'm thinking you could just cut the top off of one for the bottom and keep the top on one for the round look on top.

Color the frosting like the cake batter. 12+yellow 10+red. Mix cream cheese in before food coloring if you want.

Frost trimmed portion of one cake. Make the pumpkin buy placing two trimmed portions together.

Frost.....embellish and add the cute stem.

Frosting was tricky and messy...but got better as we went along. I sat the cake on a plate so I could get it to my eye level and move the plate around as I frosted. I think there is an actual plate for that with a poky thing in the middle to hold the cake in place. Oh well... it worked.

Carefully move cakes from frosting plate to where you want them. This can be tricky and messy. A stainless steel spatula worked pretty good.

We made mini cakes too using a mini muffin pan, but felt it was to much work and liked the big ones better. You should get about 12 pumpkins from one mix. You actually might need 2 frostings if you don't add cream cheese.

Enjoy and Happy Fall!!!!