Pumpkin Cream Cheese Truffles & Vegan Halloween

Happy Halloween! What better way to end Vegan MoFo than with a deliciously sweet spread. We had a Halloween party Saturday night, and yep, I did my crazy hostess thing yet again.... This time, I made bourbon cinnamon cupcakes, candy corn, and pumpkin cream cheese truffles.

There were so many yummy vegan Halloween treats flying around on the blogs, it was hard to decide what to make. These sugar cookies looked good, and there's a great round-up of vegan Halloween treats on Babble, but these were 3 recipes I just HAD to make:

My Vegan Halloween Spread:
Urban Housewife's Vegan Candy Corn (and my chocolate candy corn variation)
The Tolerant Vegan's Bourbon Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
Gimme Some Oven's Pumpkin Cream Cheese Truffles - these weren't vegan, so I veganized them- recipe below!

Vegan White Chocolate Pumpkin Cream Cheese Truffles
Recipe adapted from Gimme Some Oven
Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp pumpkin puree
• 1 and 1/2 cups gingersnap cookie crumbles (measure after finely mixed in food processor; many organic gingersnap cookies are already vegan)
• 6 Tbsp vegan cream cheese
• 3 Tbsp powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp salt
• scant 1/2 cup white chocolate chips for filling (you can order these vegan white chocolate chips from Amazon), plus 8 oz (1 bag of the link I just posted) for coating the truffles
• Optional- for decoration, or some dark chocolate coated truffles, 1/2 cup semisweet or dark chocolate chips

Steps:

1. Combine all ingredients besides the white chocolate in a food processor and mix until smooth. 
2. Melt the 1/2 cup white chocolate in a double boiler- be careful not to overheat it. Add this to the food processor and pulse to combine.
3. Store the mix in the freezer for about an hour until it is firm enough to roll into balls.
4. Remove mix from freezer. Place a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet and scoop out the filling mix with a teaspoon measure (or Tbsp if you like large truffles, but I recommend keeping them small) and roll into a ball with your hands (you can dust your hands with powdered sugar if they get too sticky). 
5. Place the cookie sheet with the balls back in the freezer for 2 hours, or overnight is fine too. 
6. When ready to coat the truffles, melt the rest of the white chocolate in a double boiler. To coat, spoon some melted chocolate out and roll a ball around on the spoon until covered. Towards the end of the batch, the balls may get softer, but other than being a little messy, that's ok- the melted white chocolate hardens fairly quickly, so as long as you can coat one side, you can place it back on the sheet, coated side down, and come back to coat the other side when the bottom is harder. 
7. If desired, drizzle with melted dark chocolate, crumbled gingersnaps, sprinkles, sparkling sugar, or freshly ground nutmeg. (Since it was Halloween, for some of mine I made mini ghosts and spiders- see below!)
8. Store in the freezer for an hour or so until the shell is fully hardened, and then the fridge until serving.

These are dangerously good. Really, seriously, decadent and delicious. I thought the filling was a little soft though, so perhaps the pumpkin or cream cheese could be reduced a tad more (I already reduced those and the white chocolate from the original recipe). The filling here would also make for a pretty delicious, decadent pie filling that you could use for mini pies like these I found through Pinterest.

Also dangerously good were those bourbon cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. Scary good, you could say...

These cupcakes are a new favorite. The bourbon flavor comes through, and is totally complemented by the spices in the moist cakes, and the amazing cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

My tips & notes on the cupcakes:

• I altered the frosting recipe from the original by halving it (since I always end up with too much frosting), and using a little less butter (since I wanted to make sure the frosting didn't melt at room temp, which can happen when the Earth Balance:powdered sugar ratio is too high). It came out just right this way. 
• At first I was worried the cake was too moist- the batter is pretty runny, and they sink a little after coming out of the oven (particularly if you make big cupcakes instead of mini ones), but not too worry- let cool for a few hours and the moist little cakes hold together and come out of the wrapper just fine. 
• Make ahead note (or trick to go with your treat, if you will!): these cupcakes even taste great the next day after being stored in the fridge, frosting and all. The cake is still moist, and the frosting is firm with all its cinnamon cream-cheesy goodness. So could be a handy make-ahead option! 
• The recipe yielded about 20 mini cupcakes and 6 big ones.

These were my spiders and ghosts:

And I made a few bloody eyeballs:

Lots of sweet treats!

Happy Halloween!