.................. Cooking with Barry & Meta: Awesome Autumn Dessert

Browned butter lends an incredible taste to this autumn-inspired recipe that I made for a birthday club gathering.

We love Heidi Stohs' Pumpkin-Pecan Cookies with Brown Butter Frosting so when I saw this recipe, I just had to try it. I found it at Baked Perfection blog. I made just a few adjustments and deemed the recipe to be a keeper!

Not only were the cupcakes delicious, they looked great on the tree stump cake stand that Barry made for the occasion. A great recipe and a great look for fall.

Brown Butter Pumpkin Cupcakes Makes 15 to 17 depending on size of your muffin cups

¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1 cup canned plain pumpkin puree (not pie filling with added spices & sugar)

1 cup packed brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 325°.

2. Line muffin tins with paper liners. I actually tried using reusable silicon liners and they worked great!

3. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat and continue to cook, stirring occasionally and watching closely, until butter turns golden brown. Skim foam from top, and remove from heat. Pour into a bowl to stop the cooking, leaving any sediment behind; let cool. (I did measure to see how much liquid butter was actually left after the browning process – about ½ cup + a scant 2 Tbsp., so only about 2 Tbsp. was lost in this process.)

The butter foams as it heats (foam consists of whey proteins) and the milk solids drop to the bottom of the pan.
Since butter browns quickly, this is a task that requires your undivided attention.

The butter is "brown" and I've started to skim the foam -- this is done by carefully skimming a spoon over the top layer of clear clarified butter.

This is the milky sediment left in the bottom of the pan after the browned butter has carefully been poured off.

The browned butter cools on a marble slab.

4. While butter cools, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

5. In another bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, both sugars, and eggs; stir in the cooled brown-butter mixture.

6. Add the pumpkin mixture to the flour mixture, and whisk until just combined.

This is a relatively stiff cake batter.

7. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each 3/4 full. Bake until a toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

8. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes. When completely cool, frost.

Maple Pecan Frosting

½ cup maple syrup

3 oz. cream cheese softened

½ cup (1 stick) butter softened

2½ to 2¾ cups powdered sugar, sifted

½ cup pecans toasted and finely chopped + 15 to 17 whole pecans for garnish (To toast – add pecans to a 350° oven and toast until they just begin to brown, about 4 to 5 minutes. Watch carefully as they easily burn in a matter of seconds.)

1. In a saucepan over medium-high heat, bring maple syrup to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, swirling pan occasionally, until reduced by about a third, about 8 minutes. Transfer pan to a bowl of ice water (an "ice bath") and stir constantly until syrup is very thick and barely warm to touch, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from ice water immediately. Note: Try to time this so you can immediately add the reduced syrup -- before it becomes to thick. In other words, you may want to do step #1 & 2 simultaneously.

The syrup is boiling.

The temperature has been reduced and the syrup is reducing

It doesn't take long in an "ice bath" for the reduced syrup to become quite thick.

2. In a bowl, with a mixer on low, beat cream cheese and butter until well blended. Beat in powdered sugar (adjust the amount of sugar to reach your desired consistency); add reduced syrup; beat until smooth. Stir in finely chopped nuts. At this point, I put the bowl of frosting in the "ice bath" (used for the syrup) to firm it up a bit (by doing this I didn’t have to add quite as much sugar and avoided a too sweet frosting).

3. Add frosting to a piping bag fitted with a large star tip (Ateco® #864 is the tip I used) and pipe on circles of frosting. Or, simply use a spatula to spread on the icing.

This is the large star tip that I used for piping. Even though it is large, it is essential that the nuts are finely chopped or they can get stuck in the tip as you are frosting the cupcakes.

I position the decorator bag in a tall drinking glass prior to adding the frosting. Once the top of the decorator bag is turned down, I can easily add scoops full of frosting to the bag.

4. Top each cupcake with a toasted pecan half.

Recipe without photos . . .