Halloween/Fall Themed Baking

Why yes, that is a giant spider in the cobweb flowers

My house had a Halloween party this past weekend, which for me means, another opportunity to go crazy with the baking.
I decided to experiment with mixing different fall-esque flavors together (as well as use up some leftover ingredients I still had), which led to me choosing to combine pumpkin/molasses and maple/bacon!

For the pumpkin/molasses combo, I chose to do a cupcake with spiced cream cheese frosting. As an extra twist, I cut the cupcakes horizontally in half after baking and sandwiched a layer of the frosting. The result was a whoopie-pie like dessert that was rather tasty. :)

As for the maple/bacon, I originally was going to do a kind of doughnut, but after my last fiasco with deep frying things, I decided to bake them instead. The result was less doughnut and more pancake-like, which suited the savory bacon flavor.

I baked these babies up, put on my cowgirl hat, loaded up my cap gun, and put them out for the guests, and by the end of the night, they were basically all gone!

And as usual:

Weekly Brief Reactions to TV (spoilers for all the shows in this past week!):

Vampire Diaries - so I totally called the Katherine-blood-is-the-new-cure storyline, which I wish I hadn't because I don't want to ever hear about the cure again. Also I like Tessa, Amnesia!Stefan, and Czech!Matt.
The Originals - I know they need to make this a whole show and all, but Klaus should just really kill Marcel. He doesn't need to do all this "bring him down from the inside" crap.
Project Runway - DOM WON. YAY.
Scandal - what do you know, Fitz was actually awesome (arranging that funeral, defending Mellie, confronting Olivia's dad); if only he could be like this every week
HIMYM - Something happened. Not a good sign that I can't really remember (still need to watch tonight's though!)
Revenge - I can barely keep everyone's personal revenge agendas straight. What's going on, exactly?
White Collar - the day-to-day plots on this show are actually pretty ridiculous (dancing to Mozart to avoid security cameras? Diana going into labor in the middle of arresting Mozzie?), but hey, this wasn't a show to take seriously to begin with, it's just for pure enjoyment.

Short on time this week, so I'm linking the recipes I used here:

Pumpkin Molasses Cupcakes - used the cupcake recipe here, but for the frosting, I used a generic cream cheese frosting with pumpkin spice in it.

Maple Bacon Pancake Poppers - Used the recipe here, but baked them in a mini-muffin tin for 10 minutes to make the little poppers.