280g plain flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
110g butter, softened
200g caster sugar
5 tablespoons brown soft sugar
2 large eggs
180ml milk
250g pumpkin puree

Green ready to roll icing
Orange ready to roll icing (however if you cannot find it, mixed yellow and red to make the orange)
Black icing pen

2 x 12 hole muffin / cupcake tray
Rolling pin
Nylon piping bag
Mixing bowl
24 cupcake cases
Whisk or spoon

•  Preheat your oven to 180c/gas mark 4/350f.

•  In your mixing bowl, sift together the flour, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate.

•  In a separate bowl, beat the butter, brown sugar and caster sugar together, if you wish to speed this process up use an electric mixer, until light and fluffy. The mixture should have become a lot light in colour the more you mix. Add the two large eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to blend into the mixture before adding the other. After you have added the eggs, stir in the milk and pumpkin puree.

•  Add the dry mixture into the wet mixture and make sure it is thoroughly mixed in.

•  Line the muffin/cupcake trays with 24 cupcake cases and then fill them evenly with the cake mixture.

•  Put the trays into the preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes. At around 15 minutes, switch trays over so they bake evenly. When they are golden and fully cooked remove them from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool fully before decorating.

•  To create the pumpkins, first you will need to get hold of some coloured ready to roll icing. You will be able to find this in most supermarkets, but you may struggle getting orange icing but you can buy yellow and red and simply mix them together.

•  When the cupcakes have cooled you can begin to assemble your icing pumpkin.

•  Firstly you will need to roll out a ball of green icing, no larger than a 10 pence piece. This will be base of your pumpkin head.

•  Once you have the ball, use a rolling pin to roll it out so it becomes a flat circle.

•  Place this on top of your cupcake.

•  Next we will work on the cupcake head. If you have managed to get orange icing, you can skip this step. Take a piece of yellow icing and a piece of red icing (determine how big you want your pumpkin head) and squish together, you will be to keep mashing together the colours until you have an evenly coloured orange icing. This make take some time but be assured this will happen.

•  Once you have the colour you want (if it is too dark, add more yellow, too light, add more red) roll into a ball using the palms of your hand.

•  Dab a little bit of water onto the bottom of the ball and place it onto the centre of the green already on the cupcake. When this dries it will 'glue' them together

•  To create the top of the pumpkin, take another smaller piece of green icing and form a curved 'stalk' that you can see in the photo.

•  Once you have made this, dab another bit of water onto this and place in on top of the pumpkin head.

•  This will 'glue' the stalk to the top of the pumpkin

•  Once that is completed, use your icing pen to drawn on the face, creating a zig zag mouth and two dot eyes.

Top tips:

When handling the icing, try and keep your hands dry and cool to prevent sticky and clumping so you can create a smooth surface.