These light and fruity fig cupcakes are the perfect dessert to transition from Summer to Fall.
Hi, friends. How are you? This has undoubtedly been the longest short week ever. Labor Day has us never knowing what day it actually is. Tuesday felt like Monday. Wednesday felt like Friday and Thursday. Ugh. Don’t get us started on Thursday. Thursday is the 3PM of the work week. Long. Sluggish. Desperately searching for the will to go on. We don’t care what day it is. If it isn’t Saturday or Sunday we don’t want it. BE GONE WORK WEEK.
That was dramatic. Let’s digress.
What season is it? FIG SEASON! Or in other words…that weird little time period where it is still kind of Summer but also kind of Fall. You will know the time is here when you start seeing figs in stores. I bet some of you have never even seen a fig in real life before! No judgement. Seriously. We were those people until about a year ago. After all, you don’t think of figs as being an actual fruit. They’re just a weird but delicious filling inside of Fig Newtons.
If you have been here a while you know we are all about rich, chocolatey, sugar coma inducing desserts. (This Peanut Butter Pie, for instance). However, every now and then we get the urge to lighten it up a little. Don’t be fooled, these are still sweet and full of sugar, but they are more bright and dare we say “lighter” than our typical desserts. By “lighter” we simply mean it isn’t slathering in chocolate ganache and fudgy frosting. Instead its slathered in sticky honey and the cream cheese icing has heavy cream in it so it’s a lot lighter and fluffier in texture. Still packed with sugar though.
And in case you were wondering. Everything in the kitchen is still sticky and covered with honey that we can’t see, but we can feel.We know you’re there, honey remnants.
Now, how in the hell do we get rid of you. SOS send remedies – regular soap isn’t doing it.
This is another small batch recipe because let’s be honest…quarantine has squashed our self control so we are desperately trying to scale back our desserts. Six cupcakes? Manageable. Twenty four cupcakes? Incredible and a dream come true but tragic for our pants that are inching towards no longer fitting.
Hope you all have the best weekend! We will be continuing to decorate for Halloween and making DIY garland because why pay for something that’s already made when you can spend twice as much on supplies to make it yourself and end up with hot glue everywhere?! Seriously though…why do we do this to ourselves. Help.
Happy baking!
Walnut, Honey & Fig Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup & 2 tbsp granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- 2 tbsp sour cream
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 cup & 2 tbsp flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1/4 cup walnutes chopped
For the frosting
- 8 ounces cream cheese softened
- 1 stick unsalted butter room temp
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1/3 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp heavy cream
- 1 tbsp honey
For Garnish
- figs
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
- Line a cupcake tin with 6-7 liner
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the sugars, oil, egg, sour cream and vanilla. Mix until smooth.
- In a separate bowl mix together flour and baking powder and salt.
- Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milk to the wet ingredients in the stand mixer.
- Dry ingredients, milk, dry ingredients, milk.
- Mix until combined.
- Fold in the chopped walnuts.
- The batter will be thin! This is ok.
- Divide batter between cupcake liners and bake for 15 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
- Cool completely
For the frosting
- In the bowl of a stand mixer beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth and fluffy.
- Slowly add in the powdered sugar and beat until combined.
- Add in vanilla, honey and heavy cream and continue to beat until smooth fluffy and a sightly whipped consistency.
Assembly
- When cupcakes are completely cool, pipe frosting on each one and garnish with a halved fig and a drizzle of honey