Full of Fall

As of today, I am no longer a barista.

It's the home stretch for me. I'm supposed to be in Seoul on November 9th - that's so close! I've been running around in a tizzy trying to figure out how to make everything work out in time.

Fall is my favorite season. Hands down. There's something about the not-too-hot, not-too-cold weather that I love. I love sweaters and boots and scarves and I'm such a sucker for everything seasonal. I could mainline apple cider at this point and be a happy camper. So imagine my anxiety when I realized there are no pumpkins in Korea.

No pumpkins? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to get through autumn without my continual imbibing of pumpkin spice lattes, devouring of pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin anything I can get my hands on? 

Fall isn't fall without fall food, I always say.

Needless to say, I've been on a fall food binge for the past few weeks. I burned through a gallon of cider, lived off of pumpkin spice coffee and apples and cinnamon. I've been burning a pumpkin spice candle of all things. I feel like I have a problem. A tasty, tasty problem.

Fig 1: my life as of late.

But if I don't get my fill now, it'll be a whole year before I get any of this again! Which is why, when I decided I would make cupcakes for my coworkers to celebrate me finally getting the hell out of there, I knew exactly what ones I wanted to make.

Pumpkin Spice Latte Cupcakes!

I've made these before, multiple times. I love them. Everyone who's ever had them loves them. They're possibly my favorite dessert I've ever made, and they're ridiculously simple. I found the recipe here. 

The frosting, however, is a bit different, mostly because I'm not a big frosting person. Instead of the heavy cream concoction in the linked recipe, I just use my go-to frosting recipe - 1 block of cream cheese, 1 stick of butter, 2 1/2 cups of confectioner's sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract and then whatever spices I think would taste good with the cupcakes. For these, I just dumped a ton of cinnamon in. Measurements are for losers.

I think what sets them apart from other cupcake recipes is the espresso powder in the cake and the coffee that gets brushed on top of them - so if you make them, don't forget that step! It makes all the difference!

I'm off to NYC again to pick up my visa (I have another post incoming about my adventure earlier this week, so hang tight!) so I'll talk to you guys later. I hope you guys love fall as much as I do - otherwise you're missing out!

 Sometimes I think it's insane that I live here.