Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

One of the technicians at work recently moved on to another job.  Before she left, she had jokingly asked me to make her some cupcakes after one of the other doctors was talking about how I bake.  I said that I would bake her some and asked what kind she wanted.  She requested Pumpkin cupcakes.  I've never baked with pumpkin before, but thought what a perfect time to try!

I immediately went to my favorite source of cake recipes: Piece of Cake! by Camilla Saulsbury.  I wanted to use a recipe that wasn't too involved.  This book is all about recipes that use only one bowl.  Basically, you can throw everything in all at once and the cakes come out awesome!  While the book doesn't have specific cupcake recipes, I chose one that was meant to be a sheet cake and just made them into cupcakes.

I don't really eat pumpkin and neither do my kids.  But we all liked this!  It's not a strong pumpkin flavor.  It's more spice than anything, but you can tell there's pumpkin in the cake.  The original recipe calls for a maple frosting, but I went with cream cheese instead.  Mainly, because I didn't have any maple syrup on hand.

Golden Sugar Cookies

Yesterday, I threw my son a pirate party for his 3rd birthday.  He's a big fan of the "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" show on Disney Jr and just pirates in general.

I bought the kids pirate swords and eye patches and we decorated pirate hats.  I also bought pirate temporary tattoos, but forgot to use them!

To go with the pirate theme, I wanted to make some cookies.  I thought it would be fun to make cookies that looked like gold coins.  But, I didn't have much time.  Originally, I was going to roll out sugar cookie dough, cut out round shapes and decorate them with tinted royal icing.  But, since I didn't get to start making these until the night before the party, I decided to just use gold sprinkles to make them sparkly.

Easy Butter Cake with Cocoa Icing

It's fitting that my first post would fall on my son's 3rd birthday.  I wanted to bake him a cake.  Something to celebrate the occasion, but something that wasn't too big since we were throwing him a birthday party on the weekend.  Since it was a Tuesday, I thought I'd make a simple one layer cake.  It would be quick to whip up on a school night and small enough for us to finish eating before the party.

The recipe comes from one of my favorite cookbooks: Piece of Cake! by Camilla V. Saulsbury.  The recipes in the book all are one-bowl, no-fuss, cakes made from scratch.