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Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice

Kara Pierson absolutely loves fall, and absolutely insists on giving each cold-weather holiday its due. When everyone else is making pumpkin pie and sipping pumpkin spice lattes, she’s branching out, experimenting with variations on the theme. In a recent post on her blog, she featured an apple pumpkin spice sangria recipe that would be perfect for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any cold-weather party. She uses apple cider, apple wine, cinnamon moonshine, apples and pears, and, of course, pumpkin pie spice, and serves it up in a big pumpkin. She also made these adorable pumpkin spice cake pops that she says are the “epitome of fall in cake form.” It’s basically a moist spice cake wrapped in dark chocolate. “How can you go wrong?” she asks. Not with this, you can’t, we say. Find out more on her blog at www.karapierson.com. Here’s the recipe for the cute cake pops.

Pumpkin Spice Cake Pops

by Kara Pierson

Ingredients

• 2 ¼ cups all purpose flour (sub. gluten free baking flour)

• 1 tbsp. baking powder

• ½ tsp. baking soda

• ½ tsp. salt

• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon

• ¾ tsp. ground ginger

• ¾ tsp. ground nutmeg (I like to amp up the spices to get that rich flavor)

• ½ cup butter, softened

• 1 cup granulated sugar

• 2 eggs

• 1 cup pumpkin (canned or cooked and mashed)

• 1 8oz package of cream cheese

• ¼ cup powdered sugar

• dark chocolate for melting

Directions:

• Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside

• In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy

• Add in eggs one at a time beating lightly

• Add in the pumpkin to combine

• Add the dry ingredients to the wet adding half at a time and beating in between

• Pour into a cake pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350˚F

• While the cake is baking, blend together the cream cheese and powdered sugar

• Once the cake is finished and cooled, crumble the cake into a bowl and add the cream cheese mixture, being sure to combine completely

• Roll the mixture into small balls and place in the freezer for about 10 minutes to harden (if you would like to place sticks in them for a fun presentation, do that before placing them into the freezer)

• While the cake balls are hardening, melt the chocolate over a double boiler

• Carefully roll the cake balls into the melted chocolate and stand them up so the the chocolate can harden

• Before the chocolate completely hardens, top them with festive sprinkles or other decorations and enjoy!