Halloween pumpkin and ginger cupcakes

When you’ve finished carving out your pumpkin, what do you do with the insides? Make soup? Throw them away?

One fun idea to use them up is to make pumpkin and ginger cupcakes. I made these with my children and, despite quite a strong taste of ginger, they loved them. ‘They taste of autumn’ my son said. The only ingredient you may have trouble getting is the stem ginger in syrup – I found mine in my local Indian grocer but a large supermarket would probably stock it. The icing is just a simple carrot cake icing. It makes about 20.

Ingredients

200g or 7oz unsalted butter

175g/6oz unrefined light muscovado sugar

2 large eggs

85g/3oz stem ginger in syrup

250g/9oz pumpkin, grated (a medium sized pumpkin will produce about the amount required)

200g/7oz plain flour

2tsp baking powder

1 ½ tsp allspice

1 ½ tsp ground ginger

1 ¼ tsp ground clove

1 ¼ tsp ground nutmeg

For the icing:

125g/4 oz unsalted butter

Splash of milk

125g/4oz full  fat cream cheese (I used Philadelphia but any brand will do)

225g/8oz icing sugar

Method

Preheat your oven to 190c, Gas Mark 5. Line a muffin tin with cupcake cases/

Take your pumpkin innards. They’re a gloopy orange stringy mess with dozens of seeds mixed in. It’s a bit fiddly taking out all the seeds – this is where your children come in!

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat the eggs in one at a time. Add the finely chopped stem ginger and the pumpkin. Stir until blended.

 Sift in the flour, baking powder and spices. Fill each case three quarters full.

 Bake for approx 25mins or until springy to the touch, cool on a wire rack.

For the icing, cream together the butter, cream cheese and milk. Once blended, add the icing sugar - I found I had to add quite a bit to thicken it up.

 Spread the icing on top and add a piece of crystallised ginger or whatever takes your fancy. I used cut up fruit jelly sweets.

This recipe has been adapted from from The Macmillan Cancer Trust Little Book of Treats. 

Photo: Alison Percival