Page 71 Pumpkin-Brown Butter Cupcakes

"These cupcakes are made with a combination of ingredients, commonly found in a beloved autumn pie - pumpkiin, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves - and enhanced with brown butter and fresh sage. To cut sage into chiffonade, or very fine strips, stack the leaves, then roll up tightly before slicing thinly crosswise with a sharp knife." - Martha

Here it is the first week of Fall and there couldn't be anything better to remind me of the fantastic comfort food that goes hand in hand with this season than to smell cinnamon and spices baking into a delicious pumpkin pie. These cupcakes, while baking, emit the same flavorful scents which deliver the same mouth-watering sensation as pumpkin pie itself. We have been inundated with rain for the past couple of weeks, after a droughtful spring and summer, and so the hint of Autumn creeping into our lives has settled.

These cakes were a breeze to make. The ingredients are standard (albeit, the fresh sage) and the process not too bad considering you must brown the butter first. I was sceptical about performing this task...why is brown butter so much different than simply creaming butter in to the batter as many of the recipes call out? But it's true. The flavor of the butter did change hence the flavor of the cupcakes is pronounced. Martha says you don't have to add the sage to the butter browning process; since I didn't have any fresh sage, I didn't. I thought about adding dried sage, but chose not to do that either. Funny thing though, I had just returned from a home improvement store earlier in the day and almost bought a sage plant for my garden. When I got home my middle son suggested I make the pumpkin cupcakes, and I regretted not having the sage in hand.

I also chose not to make the Brown-butter Icing that the recipe suggests because I had previously made it on another cupcake early on. So instead I made a pumpkin buttercream frosting, which I placed in the microwave for 30 seconds before applying to the cake. I like to do this with some buttercreams because it makes a glaze rather than an opaque frosting. FYI...The color in the photo is true-to-life. These are very bright pumpkin-colored cupcakes and the glaze is just as bright too! A perfect treat for the months ahead.