pumpkin with pumpkin frosting cupcakes

More is more, and when it comes to pumpkin, these cupcakes have it all over- not just in the cake but in the frosting, too!  Sometimes, actually, more isn’t more, and I can’t think about pumpkins without remembering the pumpkin patch we went to during our first year in Oregon where we got completely lost in the farm’s corn maze.  Not in an Instagram-able, cute, silly mama moment where we took a few wrong turns.  More like in a stuck-in-the-same-loop-for-2 hours-with-a-4-and-7-year-old, panic inducing way.  The water bottle was long empty, we kept passing the same bent up corn stalk as I watched and desperately tried to follow and keep up with other, happier, more normal, clearer headed families as they dipped in and presumably escaped this corn maze of death.  I’m not sure if there is a corn maze etiquette guide-book I somehow missed that said, “when a frazzled looking mom alone with two kids starts following you, walk faster! get away!” but it felt like an unspoken rule.  I tried lifting each of my kids above my head to find a way.  They just reported seeing “lots of corn.”  Not helpful.  Not helpful, at all.  Finally, as we approached the 2.5 hour mark (just in the last corner of the maze, we had already spent about 45 minutes getting to this part, happily unaware that we were plowing into the Bermuda Triangle of Corn) I got desperate.  We walked over to what I thought had to be an edge and I stuck my arm through and waved madly, all while holding the four year old who was pretty much assuming we were going to either become corn or live in the maze forever.  The front attendant had to rescue us about 15 minutes before closing time.  We had like 5 minutes to grab a pumpkin and hop in the car, where I gratefully opened google maps and praised Einstein for inventing GPS.   So, when it comes to pumpkins, yes, more is more, but when it comes to corn mazes, I might be sticking to the kiddy version from now on.   

If you need thicker frosting, cut down on the leftover pumpkin puree, but still add some, because it lends a really pretty, natural fall color to the frosting that goes just beautifully with the cake. 

I think these cupcakes go great with a light hearted Halloween movie, so I would bake up a batch and watch Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, because who doesn’t love Garfield and cupcakes?  And who’s to say when a normal day at a pumpkin patch can be become a crazy, impossible to forget adventure?