Spooky Pumpkin Cupcakes

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 150 g sugar
• 180 g flour
• 1 pinch of salt
• 40 g cocoa
• ¾ tsp baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 150 ml sunflower oil
• 150 ml buttermilk
• 40 ml espresso
• 70 g protein
• 100 g sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 200 g butter, soft
• 50 g powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tsp pumpkin spice
• Food coloring, green
• Food coloring, orange
• 100 g jam (pumpkin-quince jam)
• 50 g marzipan decoration, black

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 25 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 55 minutes

Place white muffin cups in a 12-hole muffin tin and preheat the oven to 200°C (top/bottom heat). Whisk together the sugar, flour, salt, cocoa powder, and baking powder in a bowl. Add the eggs, vanilla extract, sunflower oil, buttermilk, and espresso coffee and whisk briefly until smooth. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups and bake for about 25 minutes. Remove them from the oven when they’re done and let them cool. For the buttercream, whisk the egg whites and sugar in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water for about 10 minutes to kill any germs (this works best in a stand mixer with a heat function). Then remove the bowl from the pan and whisk for another 20 minutes. Stir the buttercream again while it’s cold. This is important, as otherwise the butter added later could melt. Beat the butter with the powdered sugar, vanilla extract and pumpkin spice with a whisk for about 5 minutes until creamy. Now add the butter mixture, spoonful by spoonful, to the cooled egg white mixture and beat until creamy. Color a small portion of the finished buttercream with green food coloring and the rest with orange food coloring. Use an apple corer to make a hole in the center of the muffins, scoop out the contents, pipe the jam into the hole using a piping bag and cover the hole again with the top of the muffin batter. Using a star-shaped nozzle, pipe decorative lines of orange buttercream onto the muffins. Using a small hole nozzle, pipe the green buttercream onto the top of the muffins. Roll out the black marzipan, cut out little eyes and a mouth for the muffins and place them on the muffins. You can find the recipe for the pumpkin quince jam in my profile. You can also use plain quince jam or whichever you prefer.