Ok back to the food

I know I know so much food talk around here but 'tis the season of eating loads of yummy food right?

So hubbs had a work thing and I decided that I needed to make cookies and cupcakes so that he could bring them and have something in hand. You know how it goes... ok ok maybe I had an anterior motive (Who me? ::looks around::)

I really wanted to make cupcakes and cookies because I was craving them. But I only need to eat one or two before I'm ready to move on to something salty... By making them for other people I don't have to worry about what to do with the 23 extra cupcakes sitting around

Anyhow back to the cookies. I decided to make these pumpkin and chocolate cookies that I found online. I made them before and they are amazing. You can taste the pumpkin with out the flavor being too strong. Also they aren't SUPER sweet cookies so I don't feel like I'm eating a sugar attack, in fact they almost have a cake like quality to them.

But most importantly they are so simple to make...

After baking the pumpkin cookies and letting them cool, I melted some chocolate chips over a double boiler and poured that chocolate in a piping bag (a zip lock baggie would work too) and cut off a little bit of the tip.

Then slowly drizzle the chocolate over the cookies. When you're done pop them in the fridge for a few minutes and the chocolate will harden up again and enjoy. Yum

After the cookies I decided make some chocolate cupcakes filled with caramel and with a caramel frosting on top.

Secretly I used a box to make the cupcakes but that's because honestly the boxed mixes taste amazing and stay moist plus when you add extra things like, say, caramel then no one will notice if the cake part is from scratch or not.

The carmel, on the other hand, I made from scratch. And I'll admit that I did buy some caramel sundae topping just in case I botched the whole thing. Here's my tip: When trying something new or something that can be temperamental (like caramel) always have a backup so that you aren't stressing that the desert wont turn out. Plus if you have a back up then for some reason everything turns out and you never seem to need the backup.

I had always heard that caramel was very difficult to make in that it can go wrong really quickly but perhaps because I was SO worried and wouldn't leave the stove I didn't have a problem. Some brown sugar melted down with baking powder and cream worked wonderfully. It didn't come out stiff enough to use as an icing on it's own so I took most of it and filled one piping bag for the cupcake filling. I had a round medium tip on the bag and just insert the tip into the cupcakes and squeezed out. Not wanting to over do it with the caramel I was kinda conservative in the amount I squeezed into the cupcakes.

Then to make the icing I took about a quarter cup of the caramel and a cup and half of powdered sugar with a half a stick of room temperature butter and whisked it together to make a nice light and fluffy buttercream caramel icing. If you wanted to make your own icing I would start with the powdered sugar and then slowly add the caramel and butter to get the consistency you like. A little of each will go a long way in powdered sugar.

I placed the icing in another star tipped piping bag and got to work

Before the icing could dry on the top I sprinkled some gold sugar on top and called the done!

They were fabulous although you can't really go wrong with caramel and chocolate