Toffee Tasting Pumpkin Cupcakes - with parsnip!

Two veg in one cake - a great mid-morning snack or even with a glass of milk for breakfast, and they'll never know!

Ingredients:

For the buns:

175g soft butter (this needs to be at room temperature)

200g plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

Small pinch ground cloves

250g tinned pumpkin puree (Waitrose/Ocado do this year round now)

2 medium sized parsnips, chopped, steamed and pureed

2 tablespoons maple syrup

325g light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

Icing:

175g soft butter

225g icing sugar

1/2 tin caramel/dulce de lecce

1.     Preheat oven to 190C.

2.     In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat, stirring, until the butter turns a light golden brown. Pour into a bowl to stop it cooking or plunge the saucepan bottom into a bowl of iced water.

3.     In a mixing bowl combine the dry ingredients.

4.     In another bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients including the brown butter.

5.     Add the wet mixture to the dry and whisk until combined.

6.     Line a muffin tin with 12 deep paper cases and divide the batter evenly using an ice cream scoop.

7.     Bake, rotating the tin halfway through, until a cocktail stick inserted in the centre comes out clean, which should take about 20 minutes.

8.     Transfer to a wire cooling rack and cool completely.

9.     To make the icing whisk the butter with an electric whisk or in a mixer until pale and fluffy.

10.  Add the icing sugar and caramel and continue to whisk until you have a stiff but fluffy frosting.

11.  Swirl the frosting onto the cooled cakes and then drizzle the rest of the tin of caramel over the top.


3rd June 2013

P.S. I've just tried to buy another batch of ingredients and it seems Waitrose don't do tinned pumpkin year round anymore - it can be bought from Amazon though!  It seemed cheaper to buy in a batch of 5 cans so now I need to make up some more recipes!