Pumpkin Cupcakes

My friend Stacey posted a recipe for "skinny" pumpkin cupcakes recently and I decided to surprise her with them. The recipe and the website (www.skinnytaste.com) they came from have instantly become favorites! Here is the recipe with some slight tweaking from me, I have made 3 batches in the last week! :)

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Pumpkin Spice Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients:

Cupcakes-

18.25 ounce vanilla cake mix (look carefully for this, some cake mixes are only 15 ounces)

1 cup pumpkin puree (I used canned)

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (expensive... ouch)

1 cup water

Cream Cheese Icing-

8 oz. cream cheese frosting

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp cinnamon (I only did 1/2 tsp as I did not like how strong the taste was in the first batch)

1 tsp vanilla (be careful not to go overboard)

6 tbsp brown sugar (I added more to take bitterness out)

Mix cake ingredients until well blended, pour into 24 cupcake liners. Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. Usually our oven bakes things quickly, but these cupcakes truly need the 25 minutes or they will be undercooked.

Mix cream cheese icing ingredients at highest speed until well incorporated (on the second batch I didn't blend well enough and ended up clogging my piping gun with a chunk of cream cheese). I believe if you simply use a knife to spread a small amount of icing it would make it to 24 cupcakes, however I like mine to be pretty with a piping gun and needed to double the icing recipe.

These cupcakes are absolutely delicious and much healthier than a regular cupcake since there are no eggs or oil. According to www.skinnytaste.com they are 121 calories a piece, but because of the extra icing I used they may have been a smidgen more. These have been a total hit!