thanks for cake and tea!

Well yes I know at the Golden Afternoon Tea Company, we are the epitome of all things delightful and English tea and crumpets, of course we are! But we couldn't not wish all our friends across the pond and those far from home over here now a very happy thanksgiving now, could we?

And if we didn't have those yankee- doodles to thank, we wouldn't have such wonderful things as

MGM musicals, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, amazingly stylish 50's cars, rock n roll, red velvet cakes and cupcakes(would we still be calling them fairy cakes?!) and oo so many things to make life more fun,glamorous and cooooool!

So in honor of that ( lookee I even spelled it the American way for the occasion!) here is the recipe for Pumpkin and Walnut cupcakes, I promised in this post.

It comes from Lola's Cupcakes via Marie Claire,

and is something truly to be thankful for!

Have a great day y'all.

Ingredients:

450g of plain flour
3 eggs
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice or ginger
2/3 cup chopped walnuts
400g of caster sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons pure vanilla
400g shredded fresh pumpkin
100g of white chocolate curls

For the cream cheese icing:

250g of unsalted butter
1000g of icing sugar
2 teaspoons of pure vanilla paste
500g Philadelphia Cream Cheese

Method:

Slice open the pumpkin, remove the seeds and chop the pumpkin into smaller chunks.  Then grate 400g of pumpkin chunks.

Sift together the plain flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and allspice. Add the walnuts now too as this will stop them sinking to the bottom of the cupcake.

Measure the sugar, oil and vanilla into a large size bowl and stir to combine. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking after each addition.  This is the wet mixture.

Add the majority of the dry mixture to the wet and stir until just combined. Add the remaining dry mixture very slowly until all incorporated.  This will result in a very thick batter.  Do not overbeat!

Fold the pumpkin and white chocolate curls into the batter with a large wooden spoon.

Pipe or spoon the mixture into cupcake cases about 3/4 full.

Bake at 350 degrees, until the cupcakes are golden and a toothpick comes out clean, which should take between 20 and 25 minutes.

Finish the cooled cupcakes with generous helpings of cream cheese icing, dusted with cocoa powder and decorated with chocolate shreds

(original recipe found here)