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Double Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting

October 27, 2016 by Nicole 52 Comments

Double Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting - perfect for your next Halloween party! | pinchmysalt.com

You’d never guess that these easy and decadent double chocolate pumpkin cupcakes contain a whole can of pumpkin. These chocolate chip filled cupcakes are super rich and moist and the spiced cream cheese frosting is the perfect topping. Make sure to take these to your next Halloween party and let everyone try to guess the surprise ingredient.

This is a post from the archives originally published in October 2007. I updated the photos and retested the recipe this week – still delicious!

I picked up the latest copy of Country Living magazine when I was standing in the checkout line at the grocery store. I was starving and fell for the photo of the halloween-themed chocolate cake on the front cover. The magazine promised that it was “Scrumptious!” and “Sooooo moist!” And how could I resist the cute orange frosting and dark chocolate glaze. The truth is that I am very easily swayed by advertising when I’m hungry.

After I got home and ate lunch, I really wasn’t that interested in the magazine anymore. In fact, I kind of forgot about it for a day or two. When I finally got around to thumbing through it, I realized the cake recipe was for a Chocolate Pumpkin Cake. I had never combined chocolate and pumpkin before and I was instantly intrigued.

The problem was that I could feel the pounds piling on just by reading the recipe. A stick and a half of butter… two cups of sugar… 4 eggs… and rich cream cheese frosting. Wow!

Normally I don’t worry too much about trying to lighten up desserts. Desserts are desserts and they’re supposed to be rich and delicious. But I’ve been baking a lot lately and we’ve been eating way too much sugar. I think my body is at it’s limit because the amount of butter and sugar in that recipe was just not that appealing to me.

So, I lightened it up. With the canned pumpkin in the recipe, I knew I could reduce the butter and still end up with a moist cake. I substitute fruit and vegetable purees for fat in my muffins all the time and it works great. So my first recipe ‘fix’ was to increase the pumpkin and decrease the butter a bit.

I decided that the sugar could also be reduced since the frosting would be so sweet. I wasn’t really sure how much to reduce it so I went big and reduced it by half.

The other change I made was to substitute yogurt for buttermilk. I only did this because I happened to have a bunch of plain yogurt in the refrigerator and no buttermilk.

After scratching and scribbling for a while, I finally came up with a recipe that seemed like it would work. When I first tried it, I baked a 9″x13″ sheet cake. It tasted good and was moist and tender, but I felt like I had cut the sugar a bit too much. The recipe has so much cocoa powder that my sugar reduction left the cake just a bit bitter.

The other thought I had when I tasted the first version was that it would be great with some chocolate chips in it. So much for reducing calories!

I also decided I wanted to try it in cupcake form the second time around. By adding a bit more sugar back in the recipe, along with some mini chocolate chips, I ended up with some really great double chocolate pumpkin cupcakes that may or may not be lighter than the original recipe.

Double Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting - perfect for your next Halloween party! | pinchmysalt.com

And then came the frosting!

I did not use the frosting recipe from the magazine. I like my cream cheese frosting to taste like cream cheese so I didn’t think it needed to have all that whipped cream folded in. I used a fairly standard cream cheese frosting recipe but added cinnamon and nutmeg to go along with the pumpkin theme. The frosting turned out great and really complimented the chocolate pumpkin cupcakes.

The thing about mixing chocolate with fruit (or vegetable purees) is that the chocolate really covers up all other flavors. If you don’t believe me, try my Double Dark Chocolate Beet Muffins. These chocolate pumpkin cupcakes taste like a rich and moist chocolate cake but there’s just a little something extra.

The spices in the frosting seem to bring out the pumpkin flavor even though the cake itself isn’t spiced. It’s a little hard to explain but trust me, it works!

I did end up reducing the butter by 1/3 and the sugar by 1/4. If you leave out the chocolate chips and go light on frosting, these are definitely much better for you than the original cake. But I have to say that the chocolate chips are great and it is hard to go light on the cream cheese frosting. Oh well, I tried!

Double Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting - perfect for your next Halloween party! | pinchmysalt.com

Nutrition

Calories

370 cal

Fat

4 g

Carbs

83 g

Protein

4 g
Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info
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Double Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes
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Ingredients

Cupcakes:

1 1/2 cups cake flour

2/3 cup cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt

1 3/4 cups canned pumpkin (15-ounce can)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups lightly-packed light brown sugar

3 large eggs

1 cup mini chocolate chips

Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

2 cups powdered sugar

1/4. teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 24 cupcake cups with paper liners.

2. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt together; set aside. In a separate bowl, stir together the yogurt, pumpkin, vinegar, and vanilla extract, set aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and brown sugar with a hand mixer or stand mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Alternately beat in the flour and pumpkin mixtures in thirds (for example, beat in 1/3 flour mixture followed by 1/3 pumpkin mixture and repeat until everything is combined). Fold in the mini chocolate chips.

4. Spoon batter into cupcake cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Place cupcake pans in the center of the preheated 350 degree oven and bake approximately 25 minutes. Cupcakes are done when they spring back when lightly touched or a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool pans on wire racks for 10 minutes then remove cupcakes from pans and let cool completely on the wire racks.

5. While cupcakes are cooling, prepare cream cheese frosting. When cupcakes are completely cool, spread with frosting.

Frosting:

In a medium bowl, beat together cream cheese and butter until very light and fluffy. Gradually beat in powdered sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Once everything is combined, beat on high speed until very light. If frosting is too soft, chill in fridge for 15-20 minutes.

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Related Recipes:

  • Pumpkin Cream Cheese Cake Roll
  • Mini Pumpkin Cheesecakes
  • Applesauce Spice Muffins
  • Double Dark Chocolate Beet Muffins
  • Best Banana Muffins
  • Peachy Banana Muffins

More Halloween Treats from my Fall Fest Friends:

  • Mini Pumpkin Pie Cookies from A Mind “Full” Mom
  • Halloween Mummy Cupcakes with Espresso Chocolate Cake and Vanilla Buttercream from Creative Culinary
  • Twix Bar Brownies from In Jennie’s Kitchen
  • 5 Horror and Sci-Fi TV Show-Themed Halloween Bites from Devour
  • Mummy Cupcakes from The Mom 100
  • Bourbon Bacon Pumpkin Seeds from Foodtastic Mom
  • Mini White Pumpkin Milk Fudge with Dry fruit Filling from Elephants and the Coconut Trees
  • 6 Lightened-Up Sweets for a Healthier Halloween from Healthy Eats
  • Three Truly Gruesome But Tasty Halloween Recipes from Taste with the Eyes
  • Pumpkin Cupcakes from Mom Loves Baking
  • Spooky Halloween Buckeyes from Swing Eats
  • When Food Gets in Costume: Edible Takes on Creepy Halloween Things from FN Dish
Double Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting - perfect for your next Halloween party! | pinchmysalt.com

Filed Under: Adventures in Baking, Desserts, Herbs and Spices, Vegetarian

Previous Post: « Halloween Ghost Sugar Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Charity says

    November 14, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    I love chocolate, and I love pumpkin... so this recipe looked like a slice of heaven to me! I tried them out last week and they were a hit! I brought them to a work baby shower and I had one lady come up and hug me she loved them so much! I've never had that happen before :) I saved a couple for my boyfriend's parents - who I was meeting for the first time - and I am pretty sure that was the icing on the cake (pun intended) for winning them over! I want to try this again and do it as a loaf - any thoughts on how long it should cook for? More pumpkin recipes please! @Allie - would love to know how much pumpkin is used for the box chocolate cake... that sounds great!
    Reply
  2. SippitySup says

    November 21, 2009 at 9:51 am

    I just came across this because I was searching for chocolate pumpkin recipes. Some how I missed it back in Oct! Glad I found it now. Thanks for the inspiration. You be happy to know this recipe come up first in google when I typed chocolate pumpkin recipe GREG
    Reply
  3. Germaine says

    November 26, 2009 at 7:20 am

    I'm going to make this cake for my granny's birthday! May I use mascarpone cheese instead of cream cheese for the frosting? What adjustments should I make or do I simply replace one for the other?
    Reply
  4. Sara says

    February 28, 2010 at 12:01 am

    I found your recipes when I was searching the internet for something sweet to make with half a pumpkin that wasn't pumpkin pie! I grew my own pumpkins last year and I was using up the last one to make soup, but it was enormous so I only used half of it. I'd already chopped the whole thing so I wanted something I could bake with the ingredients I already had in the house, so I decided to give this recipe a go. I live in England and we don't use pumpkins very much at all, basically they're in the shops for a couple of weeks around Halloween and that's it, and it's pretty much impossible to buy canned pumpkin puree here, so I boiled the pumpkin and then liquidised it to make the puree, and I had to make a few other substitutions for things I didn't have - I used creme fraiche instead of yogurt, dark brown sugar instead of light, and cake flour doesn't exist here so I just used plain white flour. I also left them in the oven for about 10 minutes extra. The cupcakes rose beautifully in the oven but then sank in the middle when I took them out, and when we ate them (still warm - we couldn't wait!) we discovered that they were quite gooey in the middle - no bad thing, just unexpected! I'm looking forward to seeing what they're like when they're cold and have frosting on them. Thanks for the recipe!
    Reply
  5. Emerald Islands Polish Pottery says

    October 8, 2010 at 8:14 am

    It isn't often that you see a recipe that has both chocolate & pumpkin. It looks delicious & I cannot wait to try it. Thanks for the recipe!
    Reply
  6. susan says

    November 4, 2010 at 1:24 pm

    thanks for tinkering with this recipe so i don't have to!
    Reply
  7. easy snack recipes says

    October 22, 2012 at 3:52 am

    Never imagined pumpkin and choklit taste great together. What a really wonderful snack idea.
    Reply
  8. Sam says

    November 30, 2012 at 2:01 pm

    I made these for Thanksgiving instead of a pie when my hubby and I visited my folks for Thanksgiving part 2. When these came out of the oven we were playing card and pretty heavy into the sweet wines and by then end of the night only two cupcakes were left... there were only 5 of us. Needless to say they were a big hit! I used fresh pumpkin instead of canned, buttermilk, skipped the chocolate chips, and didn't have cake flour.... So I ended up having to do several substitutions, even so these were amazing. Chocolate and pumpkin and cinnamon... all the things I love, now together.
    Reply
  9. Jeniece says

    January 17, 2013 at 10:34 pm

    These cupcakes were way better than I had expected. No offense at all, I just wasn't sure how the pumpkin would turn out with the chocolate and the cocoa powder. I made them for bible study tonight and they were a hit. Very moist and just the right amount of chocolate without being overly sweet. Loved the cinnamon and nutmeg addition to the frosting-it certainly gave it a little something extra. I gave these a 10/10 (and I don't hand out those ratings easily!)
    Reply
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    Reply
  11. AlyB says

    October 27, 2016 at 1:33 pm

    These are oh-so-cute. Please tell us how you made the adorable ghost on top! Could it be made of frosting? a special marshmallow shape?
    Reply
  12. Janet Oresick says

    March 13, 2020 at 9:38 pm

    I would like to make these because it looks like an interesting recipe. I'm curious as to how the pumpkin and chocolate go together? Do they taste mainly like chocolate? Does the pumpkin just add moisture? What type of cocoa should I use? I have both Dutch Processed and a High Fat Cocoa--both from Penzey's. Finally do you have any recommendations for a frosting other than cream cheese? Thanks!
    Reply
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