Cool Completely / Completely Cool

When life gives you lemons, you find a new god make lemonade. When life gives you PMS, you make a huge mess.

See?


I decided on a whim that I would make some pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, so I modified a couple simple recipes (below) and came up with this beauty:


Then there was the issue of the leftover pumpkin. I still had half a can left, and I was still (and remain to this very moment) a complete glutton, so I decided to make a quick pumpkin mousse. The mousse called for 1 cup of pumpkin puree, 1/2 cup of heavy cream, a generous 1/2 cup of sugar, and a 1/2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice to be simmered for about five minutes and then cooled completely. I didn't have the patience to wait for it to cool on its own or even in the fridge, so I did the old bowl-o-ice water trick:


Fill a bowl with ice and add enough water so all the ice floats, then put whatever needs chilling in another, smaller bowl, and put the whole thing in the ice water bath. Don't submerge it, obviously, and it helps speed the process along even more if you gently stir every so often. It's better than the blast chiller in Kitchen Stadium. Not really.

Then I whipped a cup of heavy cream and 1/2 tsp of vanilla until I saw some pretty stiff peaks:


Dudes, nothing beats freshly whipped cream. It takes less than five minutes armed only with your hand mixer to make fresh to death whipped cream. It's not sweet like the canned stuff, but most things you douse with whipped cream are already sweet so you won't even care. Anyway.

Fold the whipped cream gently into completely cooled pumpkin mixture:


Then -- and this is the really important part -- take one cupcake, frost it generously with cream cheese frosting, and then -- are you listening? -- top the whole thing with pumpkin mousse:


Please make sure the mousse is almost as tall as the cupcake. Amen.

Seriously, guys: good things happen when I have PMS. I know pumpkin is technically passe by this time of the year, but I'll bet you've got a can of it somewhere in the back of your pantry. I'll bet the poor little guy has been crying since the day after Christmas that he didn't make the Holiday Pie Draft. Go cheer him up.

Pumpkin Cupcakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
2 eggs
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 350. Combine dry ingredients, stir to combine, and set aside. Lightly beat the eggs in a large bowl. Add the rest of the wet ingredients and whisk until combined. Gently fold in the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon (my preference) until just combined. A few lumps are fine and to be expected; don't overmix lest you end up with tough cupcakes. Pour about 1/3 cup of batter into greased or lined muffin pans and bake for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out completely clean. Cool completely and top with . . .

Cream Cheese Frosting
2 cups powdered sugar
6 oz. softened cream cheese
splash of milk as needed
TBL maple syrup (optional)

Throw everything into a bowl and beat with a hand mixer until it reaches frosting consistency. Add milk as needed to thin it out, but don't be too heavy-handed with it or you'll end up with runny frosting. If you're about to add a splash of milk, work the beaters for another moment before making the final decision. Remember: you can always add more milk if it's too dry, but you can't take it away if it's too runny.