I made these cupcakes for my mother’s intermittently-annual Pumpkin Party. It’s basically a total cute overload: little kids go out into the pumpkin patch searching for pumpkins, accompanied by knife-wielding adults, and harvest pumpkins and squash. Each child’s name has been scratched into the skin of one pumpkin ahead of time, and then healed over, so there is a special pumpkin for each kid. There are tractor rides and photo ops out the wazoo. And pumpkin cupcakes. That’s where these came in. This is one of my mother’s recipes. 

Pumpkin Cake

Cream together: 

1/2 c. butter

2 1/4 c. sugar

Beat in: 

3 large eggs

1 c. mashed cooked pumpkin or squash

3/4 c. sour cream

1/4 c. ricotta 

[I used 1 c. yogurt instead. With the exception of cheesecake, that’s a substitution I nearly always make— mostly because I keep yogurt in my fridge at all times but not the others.]

Stir or sift together and beat in: 

2/14 c. flour

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. cloves

1/4 t. allspice

1 1/2 t. baking soda

[If you’ve met my father, you already know I’m notorious for adding extra cinnamon to everything; it’s a very true accusation. I also added ≈1/2 t. ground ginger to this batter.]

Stir in just until blended: 

1/2 c. raisins

1/2 c. chopped pecans or walnuts

[I left these out because they were for the under-6 crowd (and their adults).]

Bake in 350F˚oven 50-60 minutes as a cake,  ≈25 minutes as cupcakes. Makes either one large bundt cake, two 9” layer cakes, or 36 cupcakes of a reasonable size. The cupcakes shown are topped with a rum-cream cheese-cinnamon icing and foliage sprinkles.

Another note: any time a baking recipe calls for pumpkin this or pumpkin that, I use Red Kuri squash. It has a very pumpkin-y flavor, but better and more so. Some people will use butternut, and that’s fine. But it always tastes like butternut to me. Red Kuri all the way. You’ll thank me. 

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