Today I have the pleasure of sharing a recipe with you that I made for the Improve Cooking Challenge! Every month, two ingredients are chosen and all of the participating bloggers create a new recipe that includes the two chosen ingredients. Then we all post our recipes at the exact same time. So Fun!
.
The ingredients for our November Improv Cooking Challenge were….
.
.
Pumpkin and Cream Cheese!!!
.
And…My chosen recipe is Pumpkin Cheesecake Cupcakes!! (Gluten free for us, of course!)
.
.
Super easy. Super Yummy. This dense pumpkin flavored cupcake with whipped cream cheese frosting was a delicious instant hit. For the cupcakes, I used an awesome recipe that includes just 3 ingredients.
.
.
Cupcake Ingredients:
- 1 box of yellow cake mix, 18.5 ounces (in our case, the gluten free cake mix only had 15 ounces, so one and a half boxes was required)
- 1 can of pumpkin
- 1 cup of sugar (optional)
.
Directions:
Mix everything together until well incorporated. You will not need to add anything else that the box mix asks for (eggs, oil, ect.), but getting this well mixed may take a little muscle.
Line a muffin tin tray with cupcake liners. Fill each cup almost full. I find that these cupcakes do not rise much, like regular cupcakes, so you can fill each cup a little more than normal. (I’m not sure if that’s a gluten free thing, or a pumpkin thing)
.
Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.
.
.
Set aside to cool completely.
.
Once cooled, it’s time to make the awesome Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting. I didn’t take any process photos, but it’s really easy. I slightly modified a recipe I found at Not so Humble Pie. It was being used to top cinnamon rolls (Yum!), and sounded like a perfect light and fluffy way to top these cupcakes.
.
Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients:
- 16oz cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 cup cold heavy cream
.
Directions:
Beat the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until smooth. In a separate bowl, make whipped cream (my first time ever!). Simply whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks are formed. Then scoop the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture. Quickly beat to combine, but don’t overdo it.
.
I used a ziplock bag with the tip cut off to pipe some frosting on top of our cooled cupcakes. A little orange sugar sprinkled on top, and check out the fabulousness….
.
.
And of course, the ultimate test of a good gluten free recipe…Did Skylar like it?
.
“It was great. Then excellent, and very very very good”
.
I will take that glowing review!
.
I would like to extend a huge thank you to Kristen of Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker for hosting this Improv Cooking Challenge!
.
.
If everything goes as planned, you should be seeing all of the other recipes from this month’s cooking challenge below. (If you are reading this in an email, you will need to click *here* to see this page online) Please feel free to click on any of the links and check out some of the other amazing recipes.
.
Thanks for stopping by!
.
Lizz
.
Wanna Pin this on Pintrest? Just click here:Pin It
.
It seems that my blog doesn’t want to work properly with the party link, so in order to see the other fantastic recipes for this month, just click on the cute frog face below.
.
A Little Bit of This & That 
){kind=link}