"Healthy" Pumpkin Cupcakes

As part of my continuing series on using pumpkin in the Fall (and because I still have several pounds of puree to get out of my freezer),  I grabbed a recipe from Dani Stout over at her blog Ancestral Nutrition and gave a go at her "pumpkin cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting." The recipe is actually pretty simple and it uses almond flour and honey  - so it's technically healthy - or at least healthier than using flour and sugar.

I learned a couple of valuable lessons with this recipe:

The first, is that my friend's new Ninja Blender is sharp. REALLY sharp. Like, gushing-blood-from-the-laceration-inflicted-by-catching-the-blender-blade-as-it-falls-out-of-the-food-processor-attachment-thus-saving-severe-injury-to-your-girlfriend's-foot kinda sharp. Holy Hell! I didn't even feel the blade sink into my hand. A thorough washing of the equipment (and my hand) and a large bandage and I was back in business.

The second is that if you intend to use cream cheese for a frosting, dont freeze it. Freezing creates crystals inside the cheese that then gives you a completely different texture to the frosting. No matter how much whisking you do, its going to come out watery and curdled.

Here's the recipe:

For the muffin:
1 cup pumpkin puree
2 cups almond flour

1/2 cup honey 

2 eggs 

1/2 cup milk 

2 tbsp cinnamon 

1 tsp baking soda 

For the frosting:

1 1/2 cups cream cheese

1/2 cup butter (one stick) 

1/2 cup maple syrup (always use the good stuff. Its not cheap, but its pure)

First, preheat the oven to 375...

I had almond meal, which is much coarser than flour, but blending it for a few minutes makes it a much finer texture. 

Add all the other ingredients to the flour and blend until its a smooth batter.
Pour the batter into lined muffin tins and place them in the oven for about 25 minutes - or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean.
For the frosting, whip the cream cheese, butter and maple syrup together, toss it in a zip-lock bag, cut a tiny corner off of the bag and pipe the cream onto the cooled muffins. 

The finished product. It stuck quite a bit to the paper lining. A bit more than I like, but at least it left me with a muffin tin that I didn't need to spend a lot of time cleaning. 

The texture was perfect and the taste was amazing.

For an added touch, Dani mentioned that you can dust the top of the icing with coconut sugar to make it more fancy, but I promise you that they will not be sitting long enough to dust them with sugar. 

Enjoy!