As we transition [slowly] from Summer to Fall here in Houston, I have found myself revisiting old recipes. The season change is never really fulfilled by the weather, so it always leads me to start changing the flavors I bake with to make it feel like Fall. Obviously, I’m talking about pumpkin spice.

Pumpkin spice gets a bad rep these days, but I don’t really care since it’s still so delicious. I found this recipe for pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting on the blog from way back in the day and decided it was time to revisit it. The original recipe yielded 18 cupcakes. That’s such an odd number, which I can only think came from me trying to avoiding eating an entire batch of cupcakes on my own. I changed the recipe to now yield 24 cupcakes, which makes me a lot happier because it uses 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin, almost the entire can . Whoever made the cans 1 7/8 cups was a real you know what. You’re always going to have too much or too little pumpkin, which makes me sad and mad.

I also revisited that this recipe is truly a recipe for pumpkin muffins with frosting on top. Multiple friends and coworkers asked me what the difference between cupcakes and muffins were, so I looked into it. After reading articles on various sites, people had tried to come up with variations on the crumb and texture, stating that muffins are by definition just a small form of quick bread. Quickbread, however, has just as much sugar as cake and the same general proportions of fat, eggs, flour, rising supplement, etc. The conclusion by most sites was that it really came down to the existence of frosting. Frosting = cupcakes. No frosting = muffins. I like them both ways, so if you’re feeling like serving cake for breakfast in an acceptable way, then by all means just skip the frosting.

Check out my updated recipe for pumpkin cupcakes (muffins) with cinnamon cream cheese frosting with new and very improved photos!