Pumpkin Chocolate Cups

Ingredients

3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup speculoos cookie butter
1 tablespoon Dixie Crystals Light Brown Sugar
1/4 teaspoon pie spice
1 cup Dixie Crystals Confectioners Powdered Sugar
Orange food coloring, optional
12 ounces melted and tempered pure milk chocolate or melted light cocoa candy melts/melting wafers
1 3/4 inch base by 5/8 inch height paper candy cups (or cupcake wrappers or mini cupcake wrappers)

Directions

Lay a stack of 4 paper towels on your counter.
Spread pumpkin puree in a thin layer over paper towels.
Set a double layer of paper towels over top of pumpkin puree and press down, squeezing out liquid.
Repeat with clean paper towels until towels no longer soak up any more liquid.
Scrape dried pumpkin puree into a mixing bowl.
Add Speculoos cookie butter, brown sugar, and pie spice.
Sift powdered sugar into bowl.
If using, add a few drops of orange food coloring.
Stir ingredients just to combine. Mixture will be very thick. If you over mix, filling may become greasy.Cover and set aside.
To make large pumpkin chocolate cups, insert sixteen 1 3/4 inch (base) by 5/8 inch (height) fluted paper candy cups into two cupcake pans, placing 8 in each pan.
Spoon a heaping teaspoon of chocolate into one of paper candy cups.
Use a food-use-only paint brush to brush chocolate up sides of paper cup. (If using cupcake liners, only brush chocolate about 3/4 of an inch up edge of paper cups.)
Repeat, brushing chocolate into remaining 7 paper cups.
Pop pan into refrigerator if you used pure tempered milk chocolate or into freezer if you used melted candy melts.
Chill until hardened for about 5 minutes, then remove and set aside until needed.
Meanwhile, repeat, filling remaining 8 cups.
If you notice any thin spots in your chocolate cups, fill those spots in with more chocolate.
Equally divide pumpkin spice filling among 16 chocolate cups (a little less than 1 tablespoon in each).
Spoon a teaspoonful of chocolate over top of filling and use paint brush to spread it out to edge.
Chill for 3-5 minutes until hardened.
Allow candies to come to room temperature before eating.
Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days or in refrigerator for up to a week.
(To make mini pumpkin chocolate cups use 24 mini cupcake liners, 1 teaspoon of chocolate to make bottom shell and about 2 teaspoons of pumpkin filling. Then top with about 1/2 teaspoon of chocolate.)