Gooey Pumpkin Cupcakes {2 ways}

Gooey Pumpkin Cupcakes … say that three times real fast.

Yeh. I couldn’t do it either. But the good news is you don’t have to be a fancy pants baker to have success with these delicious pumpkin darlings! Super easy.

I started thinking about messing with a pumpkin variation after meeting Ronne’s gooey butter cupcakes. So, I stopped by Paula Deen’s, found a pumpkin gooey cake and tweaked ever so gently.

I was curious about how to cute up the cupcake ~ and decided to try two ways. With Weck jars and a popover pan.

Gooey Pumpkin Cupcakes

Cake: 1 box package yellow cake mix (not with pudding in mix) * 1 egg * 1 sticks butter (8 T), melted

Filling: 15 oz can of pumpkin * 8 oz package cream cheese, softened * 3 eggs * 1 T vanilla * 8 T butter, melted * 16 oz powdered sugar * 1 t pumpkin spice * fresh nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Step One: Combine all of the ‘cake’ ingredients and mix well.  Pat about 2 T  of mixture into a lightly greased Weck jars or pat into lined popover tins.

Step Two: In a bowl, beat the cream cheese & pumpkin til smooth.  Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter and beat together. Stir in powdered sugar, pumpkin spice, and mix well. Pour pumpkin mixture over cake batter and sprinkle freshly grated nutmeg on top. Bake for about 30 minutes.  I started watching mine around 20 minutes because you want to make sure not to over bake. The center should be a little gooey.

With the popover pan, I patted a generous tablespoon of the cake mixture in the bottom of a parchment lined popover pan.

For the Weck jars, a little more …

The key with either is to avoid over-filling with the pumpkin mixture.

Resist filling to the top!

I love the way they both turned out.

With the jars, you could serve up without a plate. Just a spoon and a napkin. These could be topped with a spice-laced whipped cream. Mmmm.

The advantage with the popover style is these are pick-me-up kid style, while still maintaining the cupcake shape. Adorable.

Pumpkin-izing this recipe made me wonder about your favorite pumpkin recipe. What fall favorite are you looking forward to making this month?

PS. It’s PIE SEASON! I dare you to try this super easy no roll pie crust (fun how-to video included) this season. Sooo easy!

PPS. I ended up with 6 ‘popover’ pumpkin cupcakes and 8 mini Weck jar ‘cup’ cakes. And you could probably double the cake portion of the recipe and actually get more ~ as I ended up with over 2 cups of filling left over. Just don’t get all crazy and try to use all the filling by pouring to the top or you’ll have a mess. Just double the ‘cake’ or expect to ditch some filling in the end.