Gluten-Free Fall Cupcakes

Fall is absolutely my favorite season!!
Thanks to Starbucks's inspiration of the Pumpkin Spice Latte ~
I thought ... what would it be like to create this as a cupcake?
Of course, researching the internet, there are a lot of recipes out there!!

I've never made a gluten-free ANYTHING, but it's becoming very popular these days and a lot of grocery stores offer gluten-free products.
Yesterday I was invited to a classmates house and she was going to prepare lunch. Now I love eating desserts after any meal, so I decided to bake some cupcakes. However, one of the girls can't eat gluten and so I didn't want her to feel left out so I decided to give it a shot. It was not easy trying to find a simple recipe that I could attempt in only 3 hours. I've never had to work with gluten-free products and really didn't have any idea where to start or what to buy. Some of the recipes called for an extensive list of items that I wasn't wanting to buy just for this one time ... But I finally did find a fabulous recipe from skinnytaste.com. She had a great and simple recipe for pumpkin cupcakes with pumpkin spiced cream cheese frosting.

Here are the ingredients you will need: I found everything at Krogers. 

The Adam's Extract Pure Vanilla is gluten free.

Ingredients:

• 18.25 oz Betty Crocker Golden Vanilla  Mix
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 cup canned 100% pure pumpkin
• 1 cup water

For the Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 8 oz Philadelphia 1/3 fat cream cheese (do not use fat free)
• 1/2 cup pureed pumpkin (canned is fine) I didn't puree the pumpkin
• 1 tsp vanilla extract I still used gluten free vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 5 tbsp packed brown sugar I used organic light brown sugar

The color of the batter is so warm & inviting!

I found these awesome cupcake fillers at Michaels in the $1 section.

Unfortunately the cupcake doesn't rise very well, so I would def add more batter to the fillers.

This is how high they got :(

I used a 4B tip to get these cute little flower buds going. Just my own original idea.

and VOILA! Cute in it's lil white box~ ready to be eaten!!

"A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made.  The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air." -   Eric Sloane