"Fall"-ing in Love With Pumpkin-Ginger Cupcakes

Obviously, birthdays are always reason to celebrate, but they especially fill me with specific kind of glee: Yay, legitimate reason for cupcakes! When my friend Katie told me that her husband's birthday would fall during their visit to northern California this past weekend, I was off the phone and planning cupcakes in no time. I fussed with my cupcake books for a while, pondering which recipe to choose. Basic chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting? Elaborate-looking cupcakes with aliens built from doughnut holes and dipped in frosting the color of Ecto-Cooler?

Ultimately, I just looked outside for inspiration. Even here in San Francisco the air has a crisp bite to it, though the sky remains a brilliant clear blue — it's definitely autumn. Thus, for Dave's birthday, I chose something autumn-appropriate: pumpkin-ginger cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting.

The recipe called for crystalized ginger to be chopped up into tiny bits and added to the batter (which featured real pumpkin — yum).

I'd never worked with crystalized ginger before, and it really does add a spicy kick to the cupcake when you get a bite with a little nugget of pure ginger.

The cupcakes filled my apartment with that rich pumpkins-n-cinnamon aroma that calls up memories of Thanksgiving and Home. They came out a nice light orange-brown color.

Finally, I set aside part of the frosting, added some milk and a whole lot of cinnamon to color it brown, and piped the darker frosting in circles on top of the white coating. Then I pulled a toothpick down from the center to the edges, curving the brown circles into a "spiderweb" design. They didn't look exactly like the photos in the cookbook, but I was pretty proud of my delicious pumpkin-y spiderweb cupcakes nonetheless.

Happy 31st, Dave-o!!