Halloween Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Line your muffin tin with muffin tin foils or papers or grease the cups if you’d prefer to go without liners. Combine the nutmeg, ginger, clove, and allspice to create the pumpkin spice. In a medium bowl, sift the flour and add the pumpkin pie spice, salt, cinnamon, baking powder, and baking soda; set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar on medium to high until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, completely beating in each egg before adding the next one. Stir in the milk and pumpkin. Next, stir in the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated. Pour the batter into the cupcake cups, filling each cup to about 3/4 full. Try to get as much of the batter in the center of the cup and none on the sides as possible.
3. Bake for about 25 minutes, until golden brown and springy. You don’t want them doughy in the middle, because you have to be able to cut into them smoothly. Take the cupcakes out of the oven and let cool for a few minutes. Then remove them from the pan to a wire rack to cool completely.
4. Since the cupcakes HAVE to cool completely, you can use that time to make the frosting. Beat the butter for a few minutes with a mixer at about medium. Add the powdered sugar to the consistency you want, adding it in a cup at a time while the mixer is on the lowest speed. Once the sugar is completely mixed into the butter, increase the speed to medium and add the vanilla, salt, and 2 tablespoons of milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes. If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add remaining sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add remaining milk 1 tablespoons at a time.
5. Take 3/4 cup of the frosting and separate that into two halves into two small bowls. Drop 6 drops of yellow into both bowls. Then drop 3 drops of red into one of the bowls. (Or adjust for the color you would like). Stir each of the bowls (with their own spoons…) very thoroughly. Place the yellow and orange frosting in their own piping bags, and fill a third piping bag with about 1/4 cup of the white frosting. (Quick tip: If you don’t have piping bags and tips, put the frosting into regular zip lock baggies, squish it al to one corner, pinch the corner and use scissors to clip just the corner to make a whole to pipe the frosting through). Set aside the frosting for a minute.
6. Take a sharp, short knife (I use a sharp paring knife) and begin cutting into the top of the cupcakes at an angle, so as to cut out a diamond shape. In each cupcake, pipe the frosting in colored layers into the diamond divot you cut out. You can create a candy corn patter by piping in white, then orange, then yellow. You don’t have to fill the cupcake all the way to the top. Leave some room for the top to sit back on it. Take the top of the cupcake and shave off a little of the cake from the bottom, then place the top back onto the cupcake.
7. Once all of the cupcakes are filled and topped, take the remainder of the white buttercream frosting and place it in a piping bag and frost the top of the cupcakes. Be careful if you decide to spread it, because the tops may wiggle around a bit.
8. If you want, sprinkle a little cinnamon on the frosting. Top all of the frosted cupcakes with candy corns, and viola! You have beautiful candy corn-filled and candy-corn topped pumpkin spice cupcakes!